Projects slightly out of sequence again, but I'll get there in the end!
So - this one worried me a bit. One thing I'm very bad at is being unconventional, and I didn't really know where to start with this. I decided a Hockney-style mosaic was the way I wanted to go.
I often moan and groan about my lack of transport / money / time, so I try to take opportunities for photos as and when I can. My parents suggested a trip out with my daughter, so I asked that we go to a playground in Hamworthy, near Poole. Fun for my daughter, coffee for mum and dad and a lovely row of beach huts for my montage!
Once on site, I stood on the beach, facing the huts. I was unsure of what to do - should I move along the beach, taking a series of shots at each location, or should I stay in the same spot, knowing that perspective would shape the final image? 'Unconventional', I kept thinking - I really should stop being so bothered about trying to get things perfect! So I opted to take all the shots from one spot.
I zoomed in on the end hut. Using aperture priority and the same focal length throughout, I started to click the shutter button. I tried to cover all parts of the scene, and didn't worry too much about camera angle, white balance or shutter speed. I lost count of the number of photos I took - it turned out to be about 150. Finally, I zoomed out, took three reference shots to help me with my 'jigsaw' later, and then went off in search of other photo opportunities.
Back at home, I converted the RAW files to jpegs. I lowered the resolution dramatically, as it would have run into several billion pixels otherwise. I loaded them all as an image stack in Photoshop. My lovely little laptop didn't even stop for breath - they were all loaded and ready to go in just a couple of minutes!
Then I stretched out the canvas and started dragging, rotating, erasing, ordering... until I ended up with something I was happy with. Here it is:
Click on the photo to view it at 1500px length.
The final montage, even with the drastically size-reduced jpegs, was 90.8m pixels. I uploaded the low-res version above to Facebook, and wow - I've never had such rapid and positive responses to a photo on there before! I'm sure there were people who hated it, but there were also a lot who loved it. What surprised me even more was that I really enjoyed doing this, and now want to do more!
In fact, so keen was I to do another, than I walked to Durlston Country Park this afternoon, whilst my daughter was at playschool. It's a heck of a walk from my home, but worth it - it's a beautiful slice of coastline. Here's a montage of the stone globe and surrounding benches (more about this area in a future post):
I prefer the beach huts, but this one was fun to do too. And I'm going to be doing more... before long, I'll be boring all my Facebook friends rigid with them!
I think the beach huts image works really well. It's a lovely picture. I'm not surprised it did well on Flickr: I wonder if in part its popularity was because of the obvious technical skill involved as well as the aesthetic qualities? I find it interesting sometimes to reflect about what sort of works attracts people, and why. I haven't iried mosaics yet but looks forward to having a go myself.
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