Pep Ventosa is a Catalan photographer who is known for his technique of creating impressionistic looking photography by taking multiple images of a subject and blending them together.
His series ‘In the Round’ featured trees which have become the lynchpin of his work. His photography, however, is now more diverse and includes urban landscapes, streetcars and street lamps.
When talking about his work he describes how:
The process mimics how we actually see: the eyes are constantly focusing on the specific details and elements of what’s in front of them and the brain then processes that visual information making the reconstruction so we perceive the world around us.
I have curated a selection of his images here.
The Pep Ventosa Technique
Pep Ventosa uses hundreds of images to create an artwork. Is it art or is it photography? He purposefully blurs the boundaries. Look at his series ‘New Faces from the Past’
Trying to replicate the technique is not easy. As my attempt above illustrates. It is not just a process of walking around a tree, taking photographs and putting them into layers in Photoshop.
A good place to start is with the glorious Glenys Garnett
Tips to Creating a Masterpiece
- The subject has to be interesting enough to be deconstructed
- Maintain a reference point on the subject for all the images. For example, I used the tree trunk in the image above. A 3×3 grid in the camera viewfinder is useful.
- A wide angle lens is best to allow you to get closer to the subject.
- I took twenty images in the image above.
- Take jpgs rather than RAW to make it easier to manipulate later. Or do as I did convert them to jpg in Lightroom. Create a similar look and feel for each image and then export to Photoshop.
- To transfer from Lightroom to Photoshop in one step. Select the images to be transferred in Lightroom: Photo>Edit In>Open as Layers in Photoshop.
- In the layer stack in Photoshop I used a Normal blending mode with an opacity of 20%. The blending modes and opacity, however, depend on the effect that YOU want to produce.
- Try keeping the camera fixed and moving the subject see below.
Your Own Style
What is exciting about using the Pep Ventosa technique is that so much is down to trial and error, which means that your images will develop into your own style.