Some folks have asked me how I got into Composite Digital Art so I thought I’d tell you. I started out as a photographer. I was a photographer in high school but kinda gave it up when I graduated. I picked it back up again in the early 2000s and was getting pretty good at it. I loved shooting and working in Lightroom doing post-processing work. I knew about photoshop and had dabbled but for what I was working on, Lightroom was usually all I needed. Then, in the mid 2010s I stumbled onto this video by Julieanne Kost and it just rocked my world. I have no idea HOW I found it because compositing was not anything I was into. I had seen the “Photoshop Guys” (Scott Kelby, Matt Kloskowski, RC Concepcion, Dave Cross, Pete Collins, and of course Cory Barker. I was amazed at what they did but so much of it was either photo-retouching or recreating movie posters. It was all great fun but wasn’t anything I wanted to create.
Then I saw the artistic approach of Julieanne. Not only was it artistic but it was abstract! I love abstract art and seeing what she was doing just blew my mind. I searched her sight for more but there wasn’t too much. I started to dive into photoshop to figure out how she did it but other than the little bit she talked about in the video, I was lost.
A couple of years later I stumbled on this guy Sebastion Michaels. He was doing similar stuff and actually had started a course to show you how to do compositing in photoshop. I immediately signed up and I was off. It has now gotten to the point that the only reason I pull out a camera is to take pictures that I am wanting to use for compositing!
With Sebastian, I found a whole community of people doing the same stuff that I was doing, only they were doing it MUCH better! (And still do!). But I had found my tribe. I spent quite a bit of time working on composites and really enjoyed it. Then life, as it does took over and I was low on time to put into composites. By the time life calmed down enough to work, I had forgotten so much and would get so frustrated that I just wouldn’t finish anything.
Eventually, I came across Brooke Shaden. Brooke is a solo photo composite artist with a whole different vibe. She shoots all the photos used in her art and is 95% of the time her own model. She uses a remote shutter release so no one even has to be in the room and her work is dark and brilliant! (Seriously, watch some of her youtube videos where she takes you through the whole process.) She gave me the guts to dive back in, relearn what I had forgotten, and continue down my artistic trail.
