I decided to film my final collage, to demonstrate the photo collage process from start to finish.
As you can see, first, all of the printed photographs are sorted into piles of varying degrees of distances: farther away shots of the subject, regular bust/portrait shots of the subject, and closeup shots of the subject. Once all the photographs are sorted, I then look through the pile of bust/portrait shots to find the photograph that will become the base of the entire collage as the topmost layer.
After selecting the base photograph, I begin cutting. I start by cutting along the outline of the subject's face and body, leaving hair, articles of clothing, and other external non-bodily elements out. Then with this base piece, I go through the stacks of photographs again, overlaying it on each photograph to find one that fits best, while simultaneously looking for features such as eyes, noses, and mouths, to incorporate in certain layers along the way. When people look at faces, they predominantley look at the eyes first, bouncing back between the eyes, and then look at the mouth, the nose, and along the outline of the face. I felt that it was important to incoporate these features to ensure that the photo collage portraits are still registered as faces to the viewer, and not just an abstract pattern or object.
For each layer that I cut, I would also loosely follow the rule I set for the first base layer, cutting along the outline of the subject's face and body, but also adding extra cuts I felt necessary as I encountered them. This creates some interesting variation in the pieces, that are unique to each subject's photo collage. Then, the process of cutting and overlaying is then repeated for every single layer.



















