Political Montage

For this project, the idea was to create a montage with a political theme, quite a straight forward task, the inspiration from this came from people like Peter Kennard. We had to base our images on subjects that interest or appeal to us, so I personally went for the war for oil subject, I find it to be interesting and offers a lot you can do.

A montage is a compilation of images that combined to make a large one, for the one I created I took a sunsetting over an oil field and then got silhouette of soldiers standing around and shooting and made it look like they where defending these fields or fighting for them, using phrases like "Freedom isn't free" to drive home the ideal that we are fighting a war just for oil.

Both images were made in Photoshop and are compiled of several images edited together, the first one I prefer as a piece, the setting sun in the background gives a great colour pallet, the black silhouettes of the oil rig and soldiers stand out so much more because of the colour.  The hidden message "Freedom isn't free" in the top right corner is made so it is a similar colour to the clouds, I did this because I find it drives the meaning of it, it's hidden and hard to find, almost like it is not meant to be.


The second one is a similar setting but I used an American flag instead of the silhouettes, the idea came from a postcard I got from a friend, a sun setting over a beach in California, so to replicate it I took a picture of a sunsetting over a large oil field, to add to it I put in a faded out picture of an American flag and then added the text. "Welcome to America! We believe in FREEDOM!" a personal issues that apples to me is the war for oil, a lot of the inspiration from Peter Kennard's work, using the simple images and mashing them together to make powerful messages, I'd like to do this project again because I believe I can produce better results, but I feel happy with the overall work.

The decisive moment, a phrase coined by Henri Cartier Bresson. The meaning of this word can have many views and opinions, the term itself is subjective to the individual, someone could find a moment within someone picking up a child, another could find a moment in a dog fetching a stick. For me the Decisive Moment in time is a human reaction to something, so for my take on this I did the simple subject of food, people reaction to a sour taste in their mouths. To create this I made a simple set up, basic lighting and a plain white backdrop. Once my setup was complete I acquired several lemons and sliced them up and made people eat them, recording their reaction to the sourness, some people did not react at all, saying they liked the lemons, however with thicker slices and some luck I got the reaction I was looking for.