Surreal Blending Effects

I love creating photo collages and I particularly enjoy extracting parts of photos, adding them to others and experimenting with the various Photoshop blending options to transform them into something more interesting than any of the original photos. I find that many of these photo collages can turn into something quite spooky and surreal simply by changing either the blending mode and/or the opacity. Add to that my enjoyment of taking photos in Scottish cemeteries and the obvious conclusion is that many of my photos lend themselves to the creation of layouts that reflect the more sinister aspects of Halloween. Don´t get me wrong. I´m no ghoul but the ancient Celtic crosses to be found in old cemeteries are so intricate and beautiful in a stern sort of way that I can never resist the temptation of adding yet another to my collection of Celtic art. At this point I´ve got to say that I´m no expert and what looks fairly easy to achieve is often the result of painstaking experimentation. The Halloween collage in my previous post is a good example of this. If you´re a beginner and if you also enjoy the challenge of creating collages and would like to find out how I went about it, read on.

I started off with a white background to which I added the Lightning background paper from an old kit of mine called Fright Night which I long ago consigned to my virtual attic to – appropriately – gather dust and cobwebs. I´ve since blown off the dust and frightened the spiders away in order to use various parts of it in this layout, the following background paper for example.

 

I didn´t want it quite so dense and I also wanted to discard the colour so I altered the blending mode to Luminosity.

 

Then, from the same old kit I added a full moon.

Now I´m putting the cart before the horse because I also used the following very underexposed photo of the Glasgow Art Galleries...

 

...but I didn´t actually use it immediately. It was just a part of the ongoing experimentation process throughout this collage. Here I´m simply showing you the various layers in the order in which they appear in the finished layout so at this point it´s going to look strange and out of place. However, if you´ve got this far you may have the patience to stay with me a little while longer to see what effect this photo eventually has. After I changed the blending mode to Pin Light at 80% opacity this is what it looked like.

(Not impressive but I did warn you The surprising effect comes later.) Directly above that I placed the following FN background, Stonehenge which looks like this.

 

As you can see it has its own full moon which is why I placed the additional one from that old kit in the same position. Once I´d added that background paper I changed its blending mode to Overlay and the opacity to 50%.

Yes, I know that photo at the bottom still looks annoyingly out of place but I´m gradually, if infuriatingly slowly, coming to that. The next step was to add a photo of a Scottish cemetery which, luckily, included its own crow and, unfortunately, a huge ugly pylon.

 

After cropping this photo and using the clone tool to remove the pylon, I placed it on the layout using the Multiply blending mode.

Now at last you can see the effect of that annoying photo which now appears to reflect the light cast on the tombstone by the full moon. I suppose I could have left it at that but I can never leave well alone and, besides, I wanted to add one of my favourite images, the angel which appears in another Halloween layout.

 

Luckily, I´d saved the original extraction (always a good idea, especially for image hoarders like me) so I erased the tombstone, softened the outline a little and added her to the layout as a forlorn little ghost using the Exclusion blending mode at 30%.

 

At this point I added the crow on the left which I´d extracted from another photo. For him I used the Hard Mix blending mode at 80% opacity. Then I thought that another crow flying across the moon would be a good idea in order to lead the eye down to the main focus of the page, ie the tombstone and the ghost, so I dug around among my various bitmaps until I found the perfect crow silhouette and added it at 90% opacity with the Soft Light blending mode.

Again, I could have left this as it is but it was a Scottish cemetery after all so I really wanted to add a Celtic cross. Here´s the finished layout with the cross added using the Overlay blending mode. I didn´t even have to alter the opacity in order to allow the lightning to strike right through it.

 

If you´ve got this far I admire your patience and perseverance! On the other hand, I find that these characteristics are exactly what one needs in order to actively enjoy experimenting with these wonderful PS blending modes. I hope that any beginner reading this will be inspired to try them out. It´s a good way to spend a dreary overcast day. I´m off now to do the ironing, not the best way to spend any kind of day, dreary or otherwise. I´m so glad that I´ve got Stephen King´s Pet Sematary in my iPod to distract me from that tedious chore.

PS You know, after reading the book I´ve found it almost impossible to spell that word correctly without using the spell check....

All Souls´ Night

The origins of Halloween, also known as All Souls´Night, lie in the Celtic festival of Samhain, (a Gaelic word meaning summer´s end) which marked the end of summer and the harvest. Bonfires were lit, often to provide light for those bringing in livestock from the fields or mountains to be slaughtered for winter. On this day, the Celts believed that the door to the underworld was opened, letting in spirits. They would hold a feast, setting a place for any deceased relatives, as they were believed to visit home on this day. Malevolent spirits entered the earthly realm as well and people would dress in costume in order to confuse these spirits. This evolved into the custom of visiting houses to collect food for the feast while in costume, a precursor to trick-or-treating.

I don´t know exactly when Halloween became sanitized, commercialized and family friendly but a poem written by the American Edith Wharton in 1903 seems to indicate that it still retained its most sinister connotations around that time. Read the first verse and judge for yourself.

All Souls

by

Edith Wharton

A thin moon faints in the sky o’erhead,

And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.

Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,

Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,

But forth of the gate and down the road,

Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.

For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,

When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

I wonder if she had something like this in mind.

By the way, if you´re a beginner and would like to know how relatively easy it was to create the above collage, watch this space and I´ll show you.... 

Mickey Mouth

Mick Jagger would definitely get no satisfaction if he could see what Frank N Furter has done to his face during one of his failed experiments. It serves you right, Mickey Mouth, for having refused to let one of our friends take a photo of you in the days when you looked a lot better than this!

A Grave Subject

I took this photo in a Scottish cemetery several years ago. It´s one of my favourites.

I particularly like this version as the eye isn´t distracted by the background.

By daylight the angel isn´t at all spooky, just a little pensive, but blended into a Gothic background I think she´s eerie enough for Halloween.

I´m flying to Scotland in a few day´s time so I´d better get my broomstick out and dust off the cobwebs.

Have a creepy Halloween!
See you again soon.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Today is the ancient festival of Samhain which marks the last day of the Celtic year and the beginning of winter. The Celts and Druids believed that in the night before the New Year, the wall between the living and the dead was open, allowing spirits of the dead, both good and bad, to mingle among the living. Some of these spirits were thought to possess living people, cause trouble, ruin crops, or to search for passage to the afterlife and many of the rituals performed in order to placate these evil spirits are best left shrouded in the mists of time. Halloween, as it´s now called, is a sanitized child-friendly version of that pagan festival, now mostly practised in the USA. We would certainly rest uneasily in our beds if we knew exactly what the Celts regarded as suitable tricks and treats. I know I wouldn´t like to spend this evening, or any evening, in THIS room! (although it was fun putting it together.)

To quote an an ancient Scottish prayer,

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-legged beasties

And things that go bump in the night

Good Lord, deliver us.

Amen to that.

Happy(?) Halloween

It´s that time again of “ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night.” That quote is part of a Celtic prayer and is particularly suitable for Halloween, when according to ancient Celtic tradition, the dead walk again with malicious intent. Halloween originated in Scotland and we Scots still take our Halloween seriously. No friendly smiling ghosts and harmless leering pumpkins for us. After all, it was a grim festival with blood-curdling ceremonies. I won´t tell you what the “trick” was but leave it mercifully shrouded in the mists of time, and I certainly won´t divulge what the “treat” consisted of. I wouldn´t want to entirely spoil the day for you and make you shudder as you hand out the candy.

My husband just missed being born on Halloween by one day so I always include something slightly macabre among his presents. Yesterday he got a very trendy dog-walking jacket – nothing sinister about that - and a giant-sized lighter with this motif on it, the next best thing to having it tattooed on his biceps...

Dora, who plays absolutely no part in any of this foolishness, would be mad at me if she knew about the gruesome looking image below which shows her in an unusually unflattering light. She hates having her photo taken anyway but especially first thing in the morning before she´s fixed her face...but then don´t we all?

Having played such a nasty trick on her maybe I´d better get off now and give her a treat.

Happy(?) Halloween!