MONTAGE!

This is my, slightly confused, photography montage:

So this is my montage photo. The original ideas was to develop a montagep hoto portraying different aspects of one spot in four different directions (north, south, east and west). Unforutnately that didn’t come out as effectively as I hoped.

What I have changed my concept to is various fairly or well established structures of hull. In the montage is the fountain of queen’s garden, Mick Ronson Memorial Building, KC Stadium, BBC building, Park Street Flyover and the Council Flats.

The reason to why I changed my project’s concept was because during my efforts to take the photos, I found it really difficult to find spots in which effective photos could e taken from all four directions.

The montage was made by laying images above each other, each to its own layer. Then each image had a mask applied to their respective layers and, with the paint brush tool’s colour set to black, coloured over areas that I didn’t want to appear in the montage. This cleared the areas that were coloured, like a fading mask.

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Collectiong Materials and changes

I have collected the photos that I plan to use for my montage. Unfortunately, through collection the photos I had to make a radical change to how I planned to produce the photos for comparison.

The original idea was to establish a location and, facing north, then east, then south and then west, taking a photo at a parallel angle from the ground. Then each of the photos of that location would be compared to each other. Then a new location would be chosen and the same idea applied, performing this development at least three times.

Although there is a change, the initial idea is the same. The only thing that is being changed is that instead of producing multiple little montages, I will be producing a single large collection of locations for comparison. Also I have decided that a photo of several directions is although effective, it is not as effective in the style that I originally chose to perform it in. So instead of taking a photo of north, east, south and west directions, I am now going to take several photos of an area that can be connected via the photos, but give a different impact of impression.

This change, I believe, is more effective as it allows me to compare the photos, while making acknowledgement that they are within the same distance of each other so that they have a different effect on opinions of an area.

As an additional note, I had planned to try and update the posts for this blog as frequently as possible. Unfortunately, as a result of bad time management and consideration to the difficulty of some pieces of work as part of my other projects, I neglected the photography blog. Understanding my mistakes, I  plan to make better use of my time to establish progress for this project and consider the necessity of other projects at times when they actually need completing, to efficiently complete all work that I am currently working on.

Once the first set of photos have been appropriately editted to fit into the blog, I will then begin producing the montage sequence and establish the comparisons within.

After looking at a few photographer’s work and analysing what is expected of a montage photography project, I have developed what montage I plan to do.

My basic idea is to produce several small montage collections, compare each of the photos in their own collection and discuss the impression given by the photo.

These are the specifics of what I plan to do for this project:

I will begin each montage by choosing my first location as the main point of the specific collection. At this point I will use a photography camera and pin point north, south,east and west and these will be the directions that I will take the photos for the mini montages. The camera will remain in the same spot for each picture of a specific montage group, except for the direction it is facing. When i take a photo, I’ll then turn clockwise to the next direction until all directions have been taken.

Once I have the photos for each montage set in Photoshop, I will then discuss the specific details fo the photos in a comparison. Details such as the impression of the location, what feeling I get from what is in the image and compare the photos in respect to the fact they are in the same basic location.

What I hope to achieve from this is to show that a person’s opinion can change about an area (specifically in this case, Hull) merely by looking in a different direction and not looking for specific key points of the area.

While performing this plan of idea, I will also attempt to produce a landscape view, that is three hundred and sixty degrees round, of a specific location, similar to the ones produced by Jonathon Wells.

Montage Photographer Number 1

http://benjaminlim.net/phoblog/category/architecture/

This is the link to the first photographer that I decided to use as a method to evaluate an idea for my own montage photography. This would hopefully allow me to better understand what it is I am hoping to achieve from this project but also what I need to present.

I will begin by firstly establishing the types of photos that this photographer has chosen to take.

From a clear observation, the main subject of the photos are architectural structures. More specifically, ones that relate around the KLCC (Kuala Lumper City Centre). The photos are taken at different angles, aperture lengths, shutter speeds, ISO ratings and time of day.

What has been done here is that the photos, with the various different settings, have established a different view of the structure, giving a difference in perspective of what can be seen. This can have an effect on how the structure is perceived because of the different ways in which it appears in the photos.

Example, photo 1 shows the towers to be of a large perspective, because of the low angle. It also makes it appear to be distant, as though it was captured from a far length. This gives me the impression of a set of towers that are so incredibly monstrous in size that you have to stand from such a long distance in order to take in the full view. This makes the towers seem more impressive because of this thought.

Second example, photo 6 shows an up close shot of the small tower stood in between the larger towers. Because of the lateness in time in which the photo was taken, it gives the feeling of cold. however, because of the brightness of the photo and the lights of the towers, it also feels a bit exciting, as though it would be something you would find as you go through Las Vegas.

This is important as an analytic example as it allows me to consider the idea of a type of comparison I can do for my own project. I.e. a montage sequence in which the photos give a different impression or perspective of a location/target even though nothing structurally or naturally has changed other than the time of day. This will hopefully be reinforced by a different photography that I will analyze.

EDIT: I posted a link to the photos because I can’t place them on this post. This is becuase the photos are not mine and I don’t have permission to freely distribute them on my blog.

Other Photographers

So I decided it would be a good idea to consider other photographers who have already done their own version of a montage photograph collection. This would hopefully then give me a good idea of what type of approach I would want to take when producing my own collection of photographs for my photo montage.

The idea is I will look at several other photographers, look at what the theme was within their montage and also compare them to each others work. I will also be making a note of what effects, styles or concepts they have done that I do and don’t like. This approach is important as it will allow me to make a clearer understanding of a photography montage but also how I could present my own work clearly and with an understandable theme.

Just Getting Started!

Hi. This is the first of many posts that I will be… Posting, hopefully daily, to keep you up-to-date on the progress I make with my Photography Montage Essay. I was expecting to start this blog sooner but unfortunately, when I was given the project to start off with, I wasn’t entirely sure what it was I was meant to do.

So anyway, the plan behind this first post was to just establish what the project is about. What was asked of me was to gather a collection of photographs, taken by me, that had a connection. I then had to explain, in the form of an essay, what differences, similarities, connections, comparisons etc, each photo had with one another.

So obviously the first thing I needed to do was come up with an idea. I had to be able to produce a fair quantity of photos which had a related topic and would allow enough information to discuss within the essay. Once I had this idea, I could then discuss the topic in the above mentioned categories.

So this is the official start on this project, as of this very second that this first post of my blog is done. I will hopefully have a clear idea of what I want later, maybe in tomorrows post.