I love to combine my love of photography with my joy of design. I rarely have time to sit and play with my own creations, so when I get a chance, I go whole hog!  I have done scrapping, mainly my grandsons and my heritage albums, but I craved to do more.  But what?  I tried my hat at journaling, and got frustrated, I am not good at expressing myself in words (maybe that is why I focus on visual aids like photography and graphic designs to say what I feel)...I digress.  So I decided to follow my mentor's advice (Cilenia Curtis) and try journaling my thoughts, using any words or phrases that I am comfortable with, and then plastering that page with my art.  She explained it a little more eloquently than that, but I got the drift.  It began a new hobby of mine, compositing.  I started out with just using my photos to composite (samples below).  Then I realized I can combine simple elements and papers from my kits.  And finally, I started creating my own scenes or images by using both my photography and my digital art...and I have been having a blast with that!  Here is what I did:

This image shows how I used a photo of a gorilla from a local zoo, and combined him with an umbrella from my A Scrap of Vintage kit, and an egg from an old retired kit called Food for Thought. I extracted the gorilla, and then placed him over the egg, masking out the lower part of the ape to make him look like he was in the egg. I added the umbrella, and just deleted parts of the handle around his hand. Viola!  Fun to combine digital elements with photography!

I combined just photos to create this montage.  As I was touring the old part of a city, I came upon this used bookshop.  I love bookshops, so took a picture of these books stacked up ready to be sorted. I shot the image through the glass and when I got home to look at it, an idea occurred to me to put my grandsons (who love to read) into the store, scurrying all over the books as I imagine they would do!  I found images of the kids climbing and sitting, and extracted them, sized them down to the size of the books (like they were little mice in the night) and placed them to look as realistic as I could.  I added shadows, and a text to show I was peeking through the front glass of a USED BOOK STORE.

I used  two photos with this collage. One is a heritage photo of my son-in-law's family homestead. The other of a woman sitting pondering the past. Or so I wanted it to appear. She actually was sitting on the beach looking out over the ocean (and she is an element in my LifeLine Grief Bundle).  But, in creating our own scenes, we can make it look like anything we want.  I added a texture to create an old world look.  I could have added a scene of kids frolicking in the waves, or any other visual story I wanted to create an entirely different feel. 

So grab some photos, sift through some of your digital stash, and see if you can come up with something creative and fun!  Start small and simple, and keep playing!  I'll show you some more of my imaginary world later!! 

Perspective in Photography and Digital Design

In photography as well as digital design and layouts, it is all about perspective.  Sometimes you want the big picture. In photography, that would entail capturing the entire scene, like this old school house (in Trinidad, CA). It encompasses the sky, the hills behind it, the entire building and a little foreground. It tells a story about the location as well as the schoolhouse itself.

But sometimes you want to get a little more intimate with the subject. So you focus in on a specific detail, like the stairs, with the overgrown grass, and the sign leaning against the porch.  

The subject is the same, the emotion of the image is different.  It is simply about your perspective. 

It is the same with digital designs.  Take the following examples.  In the first one, using my A Scrap of Vintage Bundle. Mystampin created a heritage page giving us a lot of details, creating the "entire scene", while wombat created a page that was more intimate, one that draws you into a specific subject. Both using the same kit, each emitting a different emotion when viewing it. I love both of these, and both styles are very useful in creating your own story and emotion.