The Captain
This composite image, “The Captain”, is made from three different images. The background is of the Nottingham Loom in the Scranton Lace Factory (considered one of the last Nottingham Looms in America), the ocean and beach are from Fort Tilden, the ship’s wheel is from the Nottingham Loom and the “Captain” is a vintage photo I bought from e-vint.com. Believe or not of all the vintage photos I have I did not have one of a captain standing. Sitting yes, standing no.
I found that I really have a lot of fun working with vintage images and placing them in images of abandoned places I have photographed. When I go to these places I am generally shooting two different shots. The first is always recording the beauty in these decaying places and the second is shooting for backgrounds for my composites. The Scranton Lace background and the Fort Tilden Ocean/Beach images were photographed with my Fuji X-Pro1. The clouds and rain are a Photoshop brush I use. The image was processed in Photoshop and then I used both Topaz Re-Style for color toning and Topaz Impressions to create the chiaroscuro light. This one image had about 20 or so layers in the main image. I’ve learned to color and retouch the vintage images as a separate image before moving it into the main image. It keeps the file size down a little but I generally have very large files.
I am currently working on a third image. They take a lot of time and I find I have to stop, come back and check to see if I like where I am going with a particular image. I find that I am more creative working with the vintage images so you will be seeing more. With surrealist images you can create and add whatever you like and I like that kind of freedom. With the coming of spring I will be off shooting at Abandoned American Workshops and I am very excited to be taking a workshop with Harold Ross in April called “Light Painting the Still Life”. If you haven’t seen Harold’s work, you can check out his site here. I just love his work.
Karen Johnson - A Photographic Life 
Fantastic! What complexity….
Thank you so much Deb!
It is tinged with a feeling of nostalgia that I like very much.
Thank you Marcelo! I am working on a series of these and I like using the vintage images because it does bring in the element of nostalgia and memories.
Nicely done. You have some mad skills when it comes to these composites.
Thank you Mark!
One of your best – if I was absolutely forced to choose (I’m glad I don’t have to!).