Whereas I had to drag myself through the Abstract Cities exercise, working on the photomontages was a complete joy and something I could happily carry on doing outside of the course. I decided the issue I would focus on is environmental sustainability. I had several ideas about how this might incorporate issues around food production/monocultures. Although it is hard to draw a montage I did sketch out some ideas to give me a starting point.
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- Photomontage thumbnail sketches 1
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- Photomontage thumbnail sketches 2
This helped me to assemble a number of stock images and some of my own photographs to create the photomontages themselves. I decided to work in Photoshop as for me it is the most efficient way to combine images and easily work with layers and masks. I created six photomontages, laid out in the order they were created:
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- Just before midnight
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- Time running out
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- Wheat
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- Three fish
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- Down the plughole
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- Plastic shoal 2
- Just before midnight: three core elements with a textured background showing a parched earth
- Time running out: playing with the Just Before Midnight (JBM) approach and morphing the clock
- Wheat: A more structured design using the cycle of wheat production from growing annual wheat to supermarket shelves to waste and mould
- Three Fish: I had something else in mind but when I added the fish layer it came up this big and I liked the way it looked lying on the rubbish. So I added two more fish to resemble fish lying on ice in the fishmonger
- Down the plughole: working with the fish and rubbish theme and showing everything ultimately swirling down the plughole
- Plastic shoal: I had made an early sketch of fish swimming with bottles and this is the result
Just before Midnight started with the background. I then added the earth on the left, followed by the clock and the pumpkin. I finished by adjusting opacity and using some masking. It is designed to be read left to right.
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- JB4M Process 1
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- JB4M process 2
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- JB4M Process 3
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- Just before midnight
Time running out (TRO) was created using a similar process with layers and masks and using the distort transformation tool.
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- TRO process 1
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- TRO process 2
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- TRO process 3
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- Time running out
Wheat used a more formal grid structure. I wanted to try a different format and to create something that looked at the issue of monocultures and the growth of annual wheat varieties in particular. The background image is of a huge dust storm to which I added the photos of the wheat roots and the soil differences. I moved the images and changed opacities and added the wheat. I added the circles of supermarket shelves and finished with the mouldy bread to show the lifecycle of the process.
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- Wheat process 1
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- Wheat process 2
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- Wheat process 3
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- Wheat
Three fish was very simple in process terms. I found the rubbish image and used that as the background. I was intending to weave the fish into the rubbish but when I added the first fish I decided to just copy them and overlay them on the rubbish. I left both at 100% opacity.
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- Three fish process 1
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- Three fish
Down the Plughole used the same background as three fish and I integrated the fish into the rubbish. I thought I would just fade the bottom as a metaphor for bleaching coral but this looked quite top heavy and I wasn’t sure how how best to finish it. Thinking about pollution I decided to ad an oil slick. I completed DtP by working with opacity levels, masking, using the swirl filter and adding a plughole.
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- DtP Process 1
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- DtP Process 2
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- Down the plughole
Plastic Shoal came directly from one of my early sketches. I knew I wanted to use green plastic bottles so decided on an orange background. I added the fish and made some adjustments because it wasn’t quite flat on. I then added the bottles in a fairly random order. I finished by creating more of a repeating pattern with the bottles.
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- Plastic shoal process 1
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- Plastic shoal 1
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- Plastic shoal 2
I shared these images with other students at our recent monthly Thames Valley Group meeting and had some very helpful feedback. The two images that seemed to stand our most for the group were ‘Just before Midnight’ and ‘Plastic Shoal’ (PS). Some liked the image of JB4M but felt that the message wasn’t clear enough. Everyone felt that PS had the most graphic feel but one person thought the message was too strident/obvious. It seems the issue of message is a hard balance to get right. Someone said the images with the fish felt quite ‘pop art,’ which was appropriate for the subject in terms of reflecting on where consumerism has brought us.
