The Magic of the Collage

Taking photos is something I’ve come to do in my everyday life. The camera is a part of me and the photos are an extension of my thoughts and ideas. The use of collage however is ultimately what has led to some of my most compelling images. My individual shots often feel incomplete, being part of a bigger whole, something I can bring out in a collage. Whether it’s all from the same roll of film or an intentional project, I’ve created several collages in the last two years which have become some of my favourite projects to date. I’ll go through some of my favourite examples, describing the process and how I bring these ideas to life through editing.

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I once shot a roll of black and white film that included three things: the city streets of Kyoto, Japan, a Lil Tracy rap show, and some shots of my friends taken at a park at night. On their own, many of these shots were bland. Taken on a disposable camera, they often came out blurry or underexposed.

With underwhelming results, I continued to search for something to do. The photos seemed to all share something in common, evoking a feeling that was cohesive between all. Naturally, I began experimenting with blending a few together.

This shot of my friends had a solid black background, being taken at night with a flash. I could easily isolate each of them with Photoshop and I had more detailed backdrops from my trip in Japan: shots of the bustling yet tranquil city Kyoto. This was the beginning of my adventure into the world of collage. I quickly realized I could do more, blending a mosh pit from the rap show into the canvas. The energy of the crowd matched that of my two friends. What were they looking at? What were they so excited about?, I found the photos asking. Then there was a photo of my brother in a tree

All these photos came together to create an elusive mystery. A feeling at its strongest with all the images together, rather than just on their own. This became the first collage of many to come.

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I was at a party; I was in Grade 10. What to expect?, I wondered. Regardless of what I hoped for, the result was technology. Yep. Here, there, and everywhere, were phones. To my left and to my right, I was surrounded. Following my strong response to this observation, I reached for my camera. A simple clamshell 35mm film point-and-shoot at the time.

Having so many photos from the same event, I looked for a way to edit them into a final product, perhaps something worthy of print. The idea of a collage came to mind. I set out on the project hoping to make something which created the essence of the party. It wasn’t just one photo or one corner of the room, but everywhere I looked. The format of a collage became an ideal way to represent this idea, showing the party in the way it was when I was there.

It is through the process of editing where I finally begin to bring my idea to life. I equipped my lasso, like a cowboy. In Photoshop I used it to make polygonal selections of all the subjects. I captured them one at a time, slowly but surely. Then, I brought them all to my funhouse: the final canvas in which I arranged a collage ready for print.

This time, I didn’t have a solid dark option for the background so I had to get creative. I aimed for something that matched the colours, using a blurry image I got back from the party. I duplicated it once, then flipped a copy horizontally to create a mirrored image. I then lined them up along the vertical centre line. While the image was abstract and may have been seen as a reject, mirroring it and using it as the background made for an effective surreal effect which developed the scene of the party.

Many aspects, such as mirroring on the exact centre line, are imperfect. I direct my energy instead to capturing the feeling that I am going for. In my case, perfection does not matter and I have much more fun just going with the flow. Another unrefined aspect is the rough edges of selections I made on many of the subjects, giving away the fact that it’s a collage - it’s been edited! Who cares? It’s already going to have a Photoshop collage look and the rough selections just embrace this fact.

Upon completing this collage I learnt a valuable lesson: following through with your passions and holding on to a strong feeling can be the beginning to unearthing your most proud work.

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After having created several collages in a spontaneous nature, I set out to work on a more focused project. The result was a three part series of collages, each focusing on a different theme.

Sam is the man. The man in the college. The man who wears the blue shirt. He resides on a barren desert, surrounded by the terrors of humanity and its relationship with the world. “Take out the trash, eat meat products, consume new technology,” he is told.

These were the ideas I tried to express in my first of three collages for this project. To achieve this, I used several new editing techniques, a result of my prior experience with collage.

First I deployed the green screen. Two studio lights, present on each side of me (the photographer) at 45° angles, sitting about two arm lengths back from the subject. This even lighting distribution allowed for a simple one-click selection in Photoshop afterwards by clearly separating the subject from the background. I used green screen studio shots for all three of the collages, hoping for it to be one of the similarities between the three, building unity throughout.

The desert land was constructed by mirroring the same image eight times. Look closely. In the centre is a man dressed in white. He wears the newest and hottest fashion. He represents the anchor points for the edges of the original image, connecting the black hole in the middle. Again, I completed this effect by using the flip option in Photoshop. Only this time, I did it several times, copy and pasting the image, and using both horizontal and vertical flips.

Loneliness. Perhaps it affects us all. We always have our phones, at least.

In this collage, I incorporated photos from a safari when I was fortunate enough to travel to South Africa a few years ago. Again being part of a collection, they were great for editing together into one collage. Further, I got the idea by thinking through the theme. The animals are part of the subject’s imagination, clearly not a reality with the only other person being inside the phone.

The other subject is an image of a friend of mine on the phone with his mom. He stood on a playground and I had gone underneath the web to take the shot. Having the ends of the web all end at the frame of the photo, I was able to neatly embed it into the screen of the cell phone in the middle of the shot. I looked for things like this when combing through my hard drive, thinking about ways to incorporate photos seamlessly with some splicing. A helpful tool for this shot was making a selection by exposure. I automatically selected the highlights (brightest points of the image) to clearly and quickly have the sky removed.

Last, I created more depth by layering the subject with the buildings. The window made a perfect place to cut out the image, putting the subject underneath it. Doing this creates more engagement overall in the collage, having more images interacting with each other.

Through collage and especially this one, I was able to use images from all over to create one artwork. The genres of photography ranged from studio, to portraiture, to wildlife, to architecture. As shooting in genres like wildlife or architecture is quite rare for me, it is extremely rewarding to use them in a project like this.

In the final addition I try to capture the act of conformity and ideas around it. I used many black and white images to develop this theme which also created a much easier editing process.

By using black and white, I was able to have a lot more freedom in the images I used. While some were shot on black and white film, others were shot in colour and later converted. Photos can be easily converted by removing all the saturation or using the “convert to B&W” option in Photoshop. By doing this, a more timeless nature takes place, making the photos much more coherent.

I had some fun in this collage playing around with some ideas as a result of having so many images to choose from. On the left of the TV is an upper body while the right side has legs sticking out. These were two different images however I was able to seemingly connect them by breaking them up with a third image. Standing on the head is a split person. Having two photos taken at the same angle and same pose, I could match the two. To get a straight line I selection I used the rectangular marquee tool, then deleting half of each image.

This collage was an enjoyable final addition where I played with some new ideas, really just experimenting and having fun, mixing archival photos with studio shots of a friend.

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Creating collages with my photos has been one of my most engaging journeys in the world of photography. With access to Photoshop and thousands of photos sitting in my hard drive, it seemed inevitable to explore new ways of editing, one being collage. The format has become so much for me: a way to express ideas in ways never before possible. My vision for photography grows through editing in this format, the photos coming together to interact with and support each other, taking on a new life. In the end I think this is what is most important, doing whatever allows you to best represent your vision, because as photographers, that is the ultimate goal.