Other wise known as an “Average of Interests”, this is my most recently completed project in my Digital Imaging class. As a complete newbie to Photoshop, I wanted to share the process and the results that followed.
Each student was supposed to gather 32 high resolution pictures, appropriation from the internet permissible (this is common in digital imaging courses since the result typically does not look even remotely like the original work). An important note, these images were supposed to be related to or about things we were interested in personally. A small sample of some of the pictures I chose are found below, both my own and from other photographers (these are labeled for reuse on Google Images).
Other 
Other 
Mine 
Mine 
Mine 
Other
These and the rest of my images were then imported into Photoshop, each as a brand new layer. They were resized and cropped to fit the working space, and then the fun began (you know, because I have no idea at this point what the heck I’m doing).
With only the bottom two layers visible, I altered the opacity of the top of the two pictures to 50%. The bottom stayed at 100%, and a sort of “ghost image” overlay effect was created (which I unfortunately do not have a picture of myself, but have provided an example of).
Then, the option to “Merge Visible Layers” was selected from under the layers tab at the top of the program’s window, and the two layers become one singular layer. I did this method with all the remaining pairs of images and went from 32 to 16 layers. Did it again with the 16 layers, and went to 8 layers. Then 8 to 4, 4 to 2, and finally, 2 to 1 layer that had parts of every single image visible in it, but was incredibly abstract, and nondescript. This is what I ended up with;
What a letdown, am I right? I honestly HATED this, and as soon as those last two layers were merged and this popped up, I just wanted to scream in frustration. Not only did I not know what I was doing and was trying to figure it all out as I went, but my end result was boring as hell.
I looked on the instruction to make sure I did everything right, and saw that yes, I had in fact followed the instructions to a “T”. Great. But there was one task left; add a curves adjustment and try to enhance the colors and clarity of our resulting image. Okay, let’s give it a go. Can’t get much worse at this point.
I played around with the curves layer quite a bit, and before long, had completely altered my piece to something I was really intrigued in and proud to have worked on. Here’s my final project (and it might look a tad familiar if you’ve visited this site before);
Wow, right? What a drastic difference! (and for the better if you ask me…) I printed this out on large, professional photo paper earlier today, and was stoked by the results. I would definitely call this project a success. I learned so much along the way, and the cool thing about this project is, the results are infinitely variable based on what pictures are used, where they are cropped and placed, the exposures, etc. It really is an “abstraction of oneself”. I recommend that everyone give this project a try, and see what you create! I’d love to hear from you and see what crazy cool compositions you come up with!
Let me know what you think about this project, and, if you try it for yourself, how it went for you and what your results looked like!
Until then, keep asking questions, keep drawing conclusions, and keep on creating.
-Kortney
Kortney Crosby 
Awesome photos! Thanks for sharing!
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