11/8/2023
Looked at and talked about the montage project for the first time this semester. This is the start of my journal for the project. My initial thought for the project is the city of Bethlehem and all of its iconic landmarks, the Bethlehem star, Fritch and Hotel Bethlehem Sign, iron bridge that connects north and south Bethlehem, steel stacks, and maybe include a theme of Christmas for the Christmas city. Now I have to go out and take images
11/19/2023
I took photos throughout Bethlehem and my apartment to capture some images of Christmas and some images of my cats. My idea is to have Christmas objects, and a chirstmas theme with the cats throughout the montage
11/20/2023
I narrowed down my 104 photos to around 12-15, and showed them to the professor with some of my ideas of how I want to tackle the project. I created the layer masks of each image and put them onto the tiff file that want to be the background of the project.
Current progress of the montage:
Now that all of the images are in as layer masks I need to blend them into the photo better to make it look more realistic. I think I am going to struggle with matching the lighting of the different images but we will see.
11/27/23
Now that I am back from thanksgiving break, I worked on editing the exposure of the objects. To fix the exposure differences of each image I created an adjustment layer for the object to edit the exposure, lighting, etc. I then created layer on top of everything to give the image the same feel. This is my final product below; I am super happy with it due to never using photoshop before this semester and now I am able to do things like this. This was super satisfying to complete.
Now that my project is complete, the questions that need to be answered.
What is your overall concept and how does each layer support that concept?
My concept is a combination of Christmas in Bethlehem and Christmas in my apartment. Taking a larger background and larger Christmas objects from around Bethlehem and combining it with Christmas items from, my apartment and the animals that come with it.
Is your approach more formal and abstract, associative and surrealistic, or naturalistic? Why?
I would say that my approach is more associative and surrealistic, it’s a combination of normal life, but with bizarre additions. Why are there cats sitting under a tree in the middle of Bethlehem? Why are they just wandering around? At the same time it looks like it fits, nothing seems too out of place.
11/29/23
Although I am finished with the montage file, I am now coming back to work on this doc directly. I do not think I put enough detail in here so I am coming back to edit some of my entries.