Composite Art Photography

As a member of the Canberra Photographic Society, sometimes I take part in their photographic challenges. Here’s the image I entered for the Composite Art Photography Challenge. The theme was “Lockdown” with an additional challenge of incorporating a person/people. Now, I generally don’t include people in any of my art – I prefer animals for a start, but human beings in art generally doesn’t appeal to me. So I did a quasi-self-portrait and included my pride and joy, Sykes the Jack Russell.

This image contains 6 images I captured myself (with the help of my lovely assistants Tony and Sykes). I also sourced images of 5 cautionary signs from the internet: Danger, Biohazard, Fragile, red warning light, and “Sealed for your protection”. I decided to include an antique wallpaper pattern with posies, which were believed to have the ability to ward off the plague in medieval times. Plus there is an image of concrete overlaid for texture and a faint image of Covid-19 for more context. There’s also a handcrafted Covid-19 tattoo on the arm in the doorway.

I learned how to use layer masks and adjustment layers from watching hours and hours of Brooke Shaden’s videos on YouTube. I highly recommend watching them if you’re curious about the art form. She uses Photoshop and the most impressive tablet computer I’ve ever seen! I used Affinity (Mac’s cheaper version of Photoshop) and a small Wacom tablet and stylus for more precision than my mouse (best Aldi Special Buy I ever got!).

I really enjoyed the process, and I have another project in mind already…

UPDATE: This image won the Challenge! ☺️