Create a Photomontage

This clever use of multiple zebras creating a stunning animal photomontage was one of my instant top ten choices. By selectively enlarging and reducing the zebras you have successfully managed to weave various thicknesses of black and white stripes throughout your canvas. Personally, I would liked to have seen the whole image converted to mono for complete continuity. But by cutting out and butting up the zebras against each other it has resulted in a mesmerising abstract composition. The effect is like a wildlife version of a Bridget Riley op art painting which I could easily imagine exhibited inside a prestigious art gallery.

Painstakingly filling in so many alternate squares with palm and birch tree veneers must have been very time consuming. There’s just enough disparity between the two abstract textures to be able to differentiate the square shapes from one another. Overall your checkerboard image creates a very aesthetic two-tone shadowy effect which went straight into my top ten the moment I saw it. Your tremendous photo composition clearly shows you were barking up the right trees.

I love the energy and enthusiasm of these star-shaped figures jumping against a background of brick walls and cobblestones. The fun of the photoshoot comes across as they leap up in the air in response to your instructions to jump. I can’t quite work out wether it’s one model or different models with changes of clothes but I understand why you’ve re-used certain frames to make up your assembled shortfall. That’s okay because it gives your collaged composition a repetitive continuity. I can imagine S Club Seven’s ‘Reach (For The Stars)’ being played off camera to give your acrobats added motivation.

This photomontage has been so skilfully constructed that I almost dismissed it as being a single shot and not one comprising of 26 different images. Your artistic approach is reminiscent of Richard Hamilton’s epoch-making collages. Like the father of British pop art, you have taken an existing living space and crammed it full of recognisable everyday objects. In this case, with your own framed photos displayed around your room to achieve a very original take on the challenge. I particularly like that the sofa lines lead us neatly through the living area and up to your final picture at the top of the stairs.

This is the tiniest, unlikeliest and ugliest subject matter for a most inspirational photomontage. Your juxtaposed tapestry of forest backdrops featuring an assortment of creepy-crawlies is a macro world that’s rarely observed let alone photographed for a montage. I love these tiny creatures who all look as if they’re responding to Burl Ives musical invitation to ‘Come and crawl to the Ugly Bug Ball’.

This is a very realistic looking photomontage using the reflection of the Paris Louvre museum as a backdrop. Your architectural image comes alive with the strategically placed clowns eerily freeze-framed within the composition. It’s as if ‘les cinq bouffons’ have emerged from paintings exhibited inside the world’s largest art gallery. Like a movie still from ‘Night At The Museum’, I half expected to see Ben Stiller’s night watchman running around your surreal animation. Your expertly rendered reflections and shadows make this a very believable photomontage.

This is an extremely clever three-dimensional photomontage of colourful fisherman’s cottages repositioned to create an imaginary Burano street corner. It’s so convincingly conceived that I can’t quite make out where reality begins and ends. This much seen, much photographed Venice province is a snapper’s delight but your artistic imagination has created a delightful, never-seen-before, street scene.

This was an extremely hard competition to judge especially has there has been some controversy amongst you as to what does or does not constitute a photomontage. In my opinion hundreds of photomontages met the brief and were of such a high standard that my initial ‘maybe’ selection ran to over a third of all the entries.

This winning photomontage looks like a momentous architectural undertaking. It must have taken an eternity to select the photos let alone assemble your dreamworld that would have been a city planner’s living nightmare. The very idea of building your own postmodernist terraced street is worthy of every minute of however many hours it took to complete. The overall effect is of a suburban utopia that works on every one of your six colourful levels of skies, roofs, walls, windows, doors and flowery front gardens.

What, at first sight, looks like a single pixilated photo is actually a photomontage of your extremely condensed Photocrowd portfolio. By repeatedly copying and flipping the photos you have assembled a tapestry numbering thousands of cut out mirrored images. The effect is like a mosaic of decorative beads stitched onto an elaborate folklore costume. Alternatively it could be an aerial view of a city square sandwiched between two rivers. Whatever your montage resembles one could never tire of looking through the fragmented prints - especially if it was enlarged as a gigantic poster.

This is a brilliant photomontage that’s up there alongside the surreal art from the likes of René Magritte, Max Ernst, Man Ray and Salvador Dali. Your cleverly conceived composition must have taken you a lot of detailed planning. Each jigsaw piece of the human face has been individually shot, cut out and positioned exactly as you had envisioned your three-dimensional portrait. I don’t like entries that gratuitously show the naked body in photo challenges but your tastefully assembled image based on the female form is absolutely necessary to create your perfectly-shadowed montage face. The only downside is, that in the interest of fair-minded equality towards other entrants and judging impartiality, you added your name to the photo.