Wednesday 21 May 2014

Photographic Montage or Collage?

I have never really understood which term is the correct one to use for a photograph edited from several others.

Recently we visited Whitenge Garden Centre, a large adjacent garden is open to the public (for a small fee) and is used as an examplar for the garden design business operated by the owners. Lots of unusual features and water features, follies, etc. An enjoyable visit. However of course, I had my camera with me and took lots of photos. Now I am in the middle of writing a novel - yes I know, boring ... but in order to bring characters to life, I am using images which I have edited to visualise various scenes in the novel.

It is a fantasy novel and features a wizard. So I made use of two of the garden sculptures and a photo of one of the follies. Bringing them together to stand in for one of the scenes in the book. now my question is, is this a montage or a collage? Does anybody have a definitive answer?




If you study the knight and the wizard, you will see that they have been hurriedly extracted from shots of other parts of the garden. Then pasted into the shot of the folly with "ruined brickwork" and resized to match the perspective of the two figures. The little imp looking over the wall was in the folly to start with.

OK, a lovely feature for the larger garden, but id does help me with visualising my story. I have done this a number of times now and am finding it so helpful. Want to read more about my novel, pop over to my blog, "A Novel Appears". You can also use the navigation bar under the heading at the top of the page.

Oh by the way, I have used two overlapping images of the wizard and blended them with the soft light mode to increase the contrast and bring him forward in the image. Also, just a little touch ... I added the grass at the magicians feet to place him within the scene.

The original photograph of the folly and the statues:-




See you next time.

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