Joshua Lemley

I used GIMP to create this image.  I made a search on flickr starting with Merman.  I found the image in the bottom left of the collage and that inspired me to find more like it using the term "underwater".  I personally like submerging myself in water.  It is a soothing sensation to get away from the noice of the world and just listen to the air bubble swish up past you after that first dive.  All of these images have that similar feel of initial submersion and combination of air and water.

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I looked at the examples and saw that both had their images rotated a bit to give it a cork board effect.  I started doing that but realized because my image all deal with water, I might be able to blend them all into one of them to accentuate the fluidity of water.  It took me forever to learn how to do this.  I almost gave up.  After resizing the photo I chose to be the background and putting its layer behind the other three images, I started to use the erase tool to buffer the edges of the other pictures.  I wanted to use a soft tool to make sure the blending continued the theme of fluidity between the pictures.  However when I first tried this, I could not keep it from just erasing the photo and leaving behind its white blank space in its place.  It took me the better part of half an hour to find out that you have to click on the image and change it to a "transparency" in order for the erased portion of the image to be actually transparent.  I blended as best I could fooling around with the erase tool and using different blending brushes.  However, I could not get the image that is in the bottom-right corner to look completely part of the background pic.  But it was an experience I am happy to have learned what I did.  

 

Once again, I am a complete newb, but I am excited to finally learn these tools.  I had never tried to delve into this before because Adobe PS being so expensive has always deterred me from giving it a try.  I am grateful to have been shown GIMP! I am definitely going to be trying this out on my free time for more projects!

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