Collaging myself onto a famous painting and then Hand Colouring

An example I made for yesterday's "Hand colouring photographs" workshop at the Museum Of     Australian Photography, this collage is based on Charles Conder's famous impressionist painting of the Mentone Baths. I grew up near them.

Both Conder's painting and my photo were printed on a laser printer. My photo was cut out and stuck down with diluted PVC glue. I also gave the collage a little wash of Gesso (50% diluted) to give the very absorbent paper a light sizing to better hold water colour. I then use my watercolour to build up a few coloured washes over the collage.

Link to a pdf of the step by step

Thinking Outside the Frame

This photo was almost an after-though, since I hadn’t taken a daily photo to post on flickr. I did take a couple of others but came back to this one as it summarized where I had “misspent” by photographic energy. You see I’ve become a little hooked on the idea of making the 3 column grid view in Instagram work as a secret place to display bigger images. In a strange twist this humble image made it onto explorer and there have been 1000s views over night. The real hero is actually over on Instagram @oz_endless_summer, and is meant to be promoting my photo project next year.

I first got the idea looking at making a photo of water lilies into a more painterly image. I knew Monet created a few large painting that needed to be displayed together. So it was not a big step to split my panoramic view up into 3 square images. I probably really confused my followers but slowly I can see they are starting to look at my grid view.

I have since found that there are a few others doing similar multi-panel posts and even found a tool called Instagrid that will do the splitting. However its a bit tedious to use because Instagram doesn't let 3rd party apps upload images so the individual panes still have to be manually uploaded via an official Instagram supplied app. Anyway I’m having a bit of creative fun

Clouds & Big Sky Panos

These where powerful panoramas but not so creative so I decided to make a David Hockney Joiner style collage using 22 of the photos, as my daily photo.

More Circles

   

Time & Tide

Coastal view inspired by Fred William’s strip paintings.

PhotoProject :: A better day on the beach

A better beach day, but still collecting photo references and sketches 

A Beautiful Dawn and being Accustomed to My Camera

Even though I was still half asleep and had not put in my contact lenses, I couldn't help but notice the magnificent sunrise. So I quickly grabbed my camera, despite being dark and not being able to see clearly I was able to get the camera in Exposure Priority and dial up what I thought might have been a higher ISO (I got both right) But I could tell the exposure would be way to slow (ie 1/4 second) to be hand held (click on the image on the right to see how blurry the resulting photo turned out). I didn’t even check the screen and cranked the aperture wheel down a few notches (not knowing or being able to see). These sounded better, possible quick enough, and I took a couple of overlapping images to make a panorama..

The image above is just a quick collage created with picasa. I think my beloved Pentax has done a great job even though I wasn’t able to visually check the setting or button I was pressing. Naturally I could see enough where to point the camera in the right direct and could hear the autofocus tracking my lens back and forth.
This story continue (I took a few sets of bracketed), after using my muscle  memory to select my user programmed mode on the main dial (which is preprogramed to create a series of EV values)

I had breakfast and put my lenses in, upload the photos and like the initial pano set. So I have taken it though Autostitch and used Perfect Enhance to hold down the digital noise.

The exercise of using your camera without looking at the dials, and just taking the picture is highly recommended. (Even in the Dark)

PhotoFriday :: Sunset Collage

A collage based on a series of photos of the sunset taken at Venus Bay

as posted on imageo.withknown.com

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Orange

PhotoFriday :: Faces

The many facets of my latest sculpture

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Faces

Creating a PhotoImpression for the final patch

My final entry for the patch, was a photomosaic of all my weekly entries over the year. There are several photomosaic programs around, andreamosaic is a good one which is free to download. To the best of my knowledge there is not a photoshop add-in/filter that can make this type of collage. I have developed my own technique, I call the results photoimpressions, and I have used a variety of software to prepare the image but use a wonderful little utility called mosaic creator to construct the actual mosaic, it has a free trail, a lite and a pro version. The pro version is reasonably priced and gives you the ability to create you own patterns (tile tessellations) and ability to produce enormous mosaics, but would still I recommend you try it first.

The basis of my approach is I am trying to think of colour and composition as an artist might when confronted by a blank canvas. So the first step is like the composition sketch. Not all images are suited to creating a mosaic, you need a strong composition, with a good mix of positive and negative shapes. I often do this step with monochrome versions of the photos.


The next step is to prepare all the tile images, which I usually
put in a separate sub-directory (so they are easy to load) and reduce the resolution (about twice the resolution of the size on the final mosaic, this save time and disk space). I also like to control the colours in the palette of tiles. In this case last week’s theme was contrasting colours so I wanted to stick with strong primary colours. The entries through the year are a wide variety of colours, so I decided to run them through a variety of post processes. rather than use the saturation slider, which can make images look very lurid I have instead used the vibrancy sliders in lightroom to simply enhance and/or suppress colours. Alternatively I used some OnOne presets for lightroom to limit the image to a single primary colour.



The final step, like any mark making by any artist, is very important to conveying your style and intention. I particularly like mosaic creator because I can use a range of tile shapes (as long as the make a regular tessellation). Different shapes create different textures and can have a big impact on the final image appeal. To help strength the lorikeet I have also opted to have gaps between my shapes (simple puzzle pieces) and have the original image showing through the gaps. Also in this case because I only have a limited number of images I had to choose reuse duplicates of the images, and ensure that they are not use too close together, rather than have then used once and resulting in a  very course mosaic, Finally I wasn’t happy with my first few trials, so i ended up converting the lorikeet image to a posterized image with only a few version of the R G B colours (I used paint.net for this). This helped to keep the final colours “cleaner” Then I chose to sample both the toning and colour during the mosaic creation step.

You will need to zoom in to recognized the individual patch entries

The Patch :: Falling back on joiners

I had been scouting around for a photoworthy urban landscape and whilst I live in a “vibrant” city I really don’t fine it so attractive (infact this week I was more confronted by the ulgy side of the urban aspects), So whilst I took many photos of buildings and motorways, the only ones that even inspired the idea of a worthwhile landscape for me was a group of shoots I took hand held looking back on Melbourne at dusk.  However rather that try and work up a panorama I felt there was extra charm in leaving them as a stack of images.

Whilst photo collages have been around a long time its is the joiners developed by David Hockney that can bring a rich artistic feel of personality and being an original work. His original joiners where just polaroid images (lots of them) assembled and stuck down to make a larger image. Not necessarily taken from the same vantage and often deliberately not quiet matching. I have found the collage maker in picasa is an idea place to build similar joiner style collages. However there is plenty of software out their to do a similar job (Hockneyizer is a wonderful “filter” style app,originally for flickr photos but you can upload any photo to it directly, that will take a single image and break it into a hockney style collage)
In picasa you just need to select the photos you want and the select the collage builder tool (either the Create/Picture Collage menu item or collage button if you have one on the bottom toolbar).  The first step is to select the picture pile format which is as if you are just scattering the photos on your desktop. under that is a series of border templates (the collage above has the polaroid frames, in homage to Hockney but they are not what I wanted for the final image. I prefer borderless option.) However I like to using a drop shadow which emphasis (rather than hides) the join between photos. The next step is to move around and possible resize and reoriented to photos. When you select a given image a control circle if overlayed on the photo click on in and moving your mouse slides the photo over the surface. You can resize the photo with the mouse wheel (or clicking on the orange dot on the little control button on the edge of the circular tool and moving it in and out (horizontally). To rotate the image again click on the orange dot and now move the mouse vertically and you will see the image rotate. the controls are very easy to master and you will soon be able to rotate and resize at the same time.
One of the bigger charms of Hockney’s later joiner work is that he did not try to fill the whole space and left ragged edges and some gaps but he did take time to judge a suitable background colour, something that could bring the whole together. I like this approach and so I used the eye dropper tool to select the dark blue of the sky as my background, Then a bit more rescale and realignment of all the photos together (press select all at the top of the workspace and all the photos will be outlined and can be reoriented and scaled as one). You must then hit the create collage button, which creates the composite image and puts them in a separate album called collages. You can then work on this as any other photo in picasa so I did a fraction more cropping. The advantage of the picasa’s tool is you can return and re-edit the original collages in the collage album at any time.

There should of course be some “art” applied to your selection and arrangement of the images but if you are lost for inspiration you could always try the scramble and/or shuffle button at the bottom of the collage workspace (remembering that any alignment of images will be lost)

Under the Canopy

Joiner style collage of the shadows under the canopy, 

Adelaide Botanical Gardens. 

 Original: imageo.withknown.com/2014/under-the-canopy

A Really Big Collage/Panorama

Collecting Photographic Reference for Paintings

I was fascinated with the contorted shapes of the branches of some of the mature trees along the coastal walk (the promenade at Point Lonsdale) and felt they could make an interesting series of paintings. I carry a very small sketch book (A7 sized) in my camera bag (and in fact did a few scribbles as I had a coffee over he road). A digital camera can be a vey hand thing for an artist. However I like to use mine as a sketch book taking down important details giving and overall view, I shot many photos that may never see lightroom and printing, they are more an aide-mémoire. I also like to capture at least a couple of bracketed sets to be able some additional tonal investigation when I have a chance.

This tree, possibly a very mature bearded heath, overhangs the path. I original figured I could make a “joiner” collage, but the HDR worked out well so I got an autostiched HDR panorama, Now hopefully I have a better memory to inspire a wonderful painting?

PhotoFriday :: Big Tree, Big Collage

The Big River Gum, Multi-image collage.
(in the style of a Hockney Joiner, created in Picasa)

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Big

PhotoProject :: Creating a “Joiner” collage in picasa

ne thing I probably have included enough of in this blog is how I do stuff. This is not really as a step my step recipe because I’d rather inspire you to follow the approach than copy what I have done. This should just be something that opens the possibilities not a set of fixed steps. Picasa is being side stepped in preference to google+ photos (ie the on-line service) but it is still available for download for free (as at the time of this blog post at least). One feature it does have that hasn’t (yet) made it onto the on-line side is a wonderful collage maker set of tools. Here is one way you can use them to make a David Hockney style joiner.
The first step is to take a series of slightly overlapping photos. In this case I’m talking a set of the south east horizon at the southern end of Jells park and I’ve taken them with the camera turn into a portrait aspect, to let me have more photos across the vista. Once they are loaded onto Picasa I selected the ones I want (notice they are in reverse order (ie I was moving anticlockwise, but it doesn’t matter for this process) and open the Create/Picture Collage item from the menu (or just click on the collage button if you have that showing). In this example I’m using the Picture Pile setting (on the upper left)

Once you have the pile of pictures on the screen you can move them roughly into order and there will be overlap. Rather than try and match everything up (which you can do) I want to give that joiner style look so I am deliberately rotating some images a little (To do this click on a photo and a scaling and orientation scale appears if you grab the “handle” with the mouse and rotate it the photo rotate of move it in and out to scale the photo). You can do this individually or select a few or all the photos, and scale or rotate them in unison.If you want to change the order of the pile, right click on the photo you want, which brings up a submenu and you can Move to to Bottom or Bring to the Top.  I have left a lot of overlap in my photo set, probably more than I need, so I am taking some images out of the foreground making them a fraction large and putting them at the back to emphasis the overlapping nature.

You can shuffle around the set however you want. I’m not looking for such a regular appearance and don’t mind a bend of two in the horizon, as I feel this emphasise the fact that this is a set of images. You can select them all and scale them to best fit your frame (I’m using a special 2:1 landscape shape I have created in the printout options in Picasa). Then to finish off I use the eye dropper to pick a blue shade from the sky (you have to click in the colour swatch to get the eye dropper icon then just select a suitable point in the image or colour from the pop up colour menu). I have also choosen to use a drop shadow to further emphasise the overlapping photo feel. That’s it just click on create collage to save you creation. You can always come back and edit the collage, if you leave it in the special collage album.

My joiner is only a single layer and you can easily use this approach to assemble a large matrix of photos, All that is required are more photos and a bit time for the fun shuffling them around (and/or patience).

PhotoProject :: Taking Photos without a Lens

I have had a bit of fun experimenting with ways to get abstract images from my camera so I took the lens off and took a few test shots. Basically all you get is a fuzzy blur, with just a hint of any sharp lines, nothing like a lytro, but they can be beautifully gradations across tones and colours. Assembling some of them into a simple tilled collage helps emphasis this simple beauty.

I am also experimenting here with the publishing service in lightroom and flickr as an alternative to google+ to publish images to my blog.

Under the Southern Cross

The dark skies allowed a great views of the milky way. the southern cross is high on the right hand image. This joiner style collage was created with Picasa.

Lunar Eclipse

There was a full lunar eclipse tonight here in New Zealand just after sunset, but unfortunately it was a heavy cloud cover and raining. So I only got a few glimpses of the eclipse and had to really push the ISO to get any decent exposure. However I was happy that I did capture realistic colour, for the so call "blood moon".

Russell Beach Collage