The Art of Superimposition

This article was a guest post that I wrote six months ago for the amazing site Photolisticlife, that I really suggest you to visit.

Sometimes a picture talks, but also a picture needs someone within to talk! If a picture talks, think how much four or five pictures could tell when put together in a unique image. Superimposing photos is like an art that needs creativity, fantasy, curiosity, most of all, lots of patience. It’s like a puzzle, an enigma to solve; a solution exists, the right combination exists, but we have to find it. There are no preset rules, only the rules that we decide to impose, and I think that these rules are in the four words I quoted a few lines ago; creativity, fantasy, curiosity, and patience.

Creativity
Feel free to play with levels, with opacity of every image, to raise or decrease contrasts or luminosity. Move images on the right, on the left, high and down. Free your creativity.

Fantasy
If creativity is like a car, fantasy is like a road, a highway, to cross with the windows rolled down and hair in the wind. Imagine in your mind what you want to realize, use your imagination while you are shooting, build with your mind (and with your camera) all the roads that you will cross in post-production with your creativity.

Curiosity
As in every job, you need enthusiasm and passion. Be curious, save a composed image and then do it again with the same pictures, completely changing the work and the image just done. Be curious to see the different images you can create by simply letting the pictures talk between themselves: like in every conversation there is always a louder voice, someone who talks more than another. Learn which is the “leader picture” of your composite image.

Patience
If the first composed picture that you’ll see seems to be good, maybe you are wrong! It seems to be cool, but be patient, the best is yet to come. Don’t be in a hurry to create, stop working on your pictures from time to time and if you are not sure you have found the right combination, save the project and open it a few days later. The best solution will come at the right moment, so learn to wait for it.

My Urban Melodies project was born from here: curiosity mixed with creativity and fantasy, but they couldn’t work without patience. Don’t be discouraged thinking that someone has already done this kind of artworks, remember an important thing: nobody has already done it like you.

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