Photo Montage- Fantastical & Realistic

For this project I chose to use photographs I took on my recent semester study abroad trip.  I visited many countries (England, Scotland, Italy, Holland, and Wales) and wanted to create a photo montage of the different landscapes and monuments I encountered.  In many of the cities I visited I was surrounded by historical architecture, ruins of past civilizations, and beautiful landscapes that I wanted to emphasize in my works.

For my fantastical images I emphasized this history through the use of famous historical sites and monuments in combination with elements of whimsy such as fairies, an "Alice in Wonderland"-like landscape, and high texture with a saturated and colorful color palette.  I found the image a Scottish landscape and castle with fairies in the foreground to be my favorite and best montage work. I took advantage of masking layers, blurring tool, dodge and burn tools, and various adjustment layers to make various photos blend to create a believable singular image.

For my realistic images I used notable historical monuments and landscapes to create natural and believable landscapes.  I used the same techniques for these images as I did in my fantastical images to make the various photos blend and fit together to look like one image. The photo with the image of the castle is a combination of photos from Scotland and Wales while the image of the fountain are photos from Rome, Italy. While I find the Italy photo montage to be more interesting aesthetically, I believe the castle photo looks more realistic.

Overall, I found this project to be challenging not only conceptually but also technically by using my photoshop skills to make the photo montages realistic/fantastical.  I feel that I gave a good attempt at both issues and hope you all enjoy my works. I would appreciate and comments or advice you all have on the works :) Thanks!

Fantastical:

Realistic: