Let's Make a Collage - A Contest 52 - Grandpa's Tales

Today, I understand that some hobbies that appear by accident can be very useful.

One of these hobbies is creating photo collages.

I edited my first photo collage on June 26, 2019.

It's funny, but I was able to use this collage in today's work.

So I found a wonderful LMAC community created by creative @shaka.

I saw fascinating contests and wonderful works of those who participated in them.

For me, this opens up new horizons and I decided to take part in the 52nd round of the competition Let's Make a Collage - A Contest for All Creatives on Hive.

To be honest, when I saw the proposed photograph, a landscape with grazing horses, my hands dropped.

I am used to creating photo collages from photographs I took myself.

Here, today, I had to bring to life the work, the basis of which is the thoughts of another person.

But, I downloaded the photograph and began to examine it.

When I was about to refuse to participate in the competition, I saw two horses that stood mirror to each other, like a playing card.

I started working with these two horses and, at first glance, I began to create a monster with two heads, but this is not entirely true.

I remembered a children's fairy tale, the author of which is Karney Chukovsky, called "Doctor Aibolit", if you do not understand the meaning of this name, then the doctor's name is translated as - Ay! It hurts!

One of the characters in this tale was a two-headed horse named Push-Push.

A strange character, but it became my starting point in working on a photo collage.

Further, I began to remove all unnecessary from the photograph and began to mercilessly destroy the extra horses, but in the course of this work, not a single horse was hurt.

I realized that I would create the atmosphere of my childhood fairy tales and started trying different options.
This dendroid looked good on the horizon.

I photographed this tree in Shevchenko Park, Rivne city. This monster had one tooth and one eye, but I added two teeth and a second eye to it. The result is an evil monster.

Everything is superfluous, went into the basket.

If I decided to create a fairy tale, then I must put in a collage those who will listen to these fairy tales. Of course, these are children!

Initially, I looked at Push-Pull like a horse, but I realized that this is a foal, and I need a different angle of view.

You might ask me, "Why are these children taken from black and white photography?"

It's simple. This collage will be similar to my childhood.

It took place in the Soviet Union. Black and white televisions, black and white photographs, black and white film cameras.

The most vivid impression of childhood, these were the tales that my grandfather told. He himself invented fairy tales and they differed from fairy tales from fiction.

Yes, many fairy tales were recorded on black vinyl records, I often listened to them and read a lot of fairy tales printed in black on white paper.

So, the children will be black and white, and the fairy tales will be colored.

I photographed these children on the shore of the lake, they were waiting for their parents, who, at that time, were water baptized.

As I said, my grandfather was a wonderful storyteller and I thought that each of us had, or had a grandfather who loved his grandson, or a granddaughter and entertained them with interesting fairy tales.

The new character is a grandfather who tells fairy tales to his grandchildren.

I photographed this elderly man outside the supermarket.

He sat pensively on the bench and, perhaps at that moment, he was composing a new fairy tale for his grandchildren.

There is no shadow in this photo, I had to create it.

Every parent and every grandfather dreams that their children, or grandchildren, are obedient. The model of obedience has always been sheep. Many fairy tales strive to bring to the child's mind the understanding that children should be meek and kind.

In addition to this, I created a branch hat on the head of the dendroid.

I borrowed the branches from the main photo in the upper left part.

I photographed these sheep in Moldova, where sheep breeding is very developed. I have to say that I don't like Moldovan fairy tales, they have a very, bad ending, someone dies.

I don't need the whole flock of sheep, I only cut out part of the image.

The next fairytale character is a turtle.

In fairy tales, the image of a turtle is used in two cases when they want to show slowness, or, wisdom, because turtles live a very long time.

In Alexei Tolstoy's fairy tale "The Golden Key", the turtle was the keeper of the golden key to the secret door, which supposedly hid untold treasures.

The tale itself is a plagiarism of the tale of Pinocchio. But, in the days of the Soviet Union, things like plagiarism were ignored.

I photographed this turtle at the zoo in Rivne, Ukraine.

The zoo remained outside of the photograph.

The most common fairy tales, during my childhood, were the tale that children are found in cabbage, or storks bring them.

I had a photograph of this beautiful bird and the stork appeared among other fairy-tale characters.

Earlier, I took a large series of stork photos.

A stork walked in a beautiful green meadow, but I only needed a stork.

I want to return to the conversation about the dendroid that guards the forest.

He looks very intimidating.

But, in fact, he is very kind.

He is very worried that small fences will not be able to keep the children and they will penetrate into a dense forest, where they can get lost and get lost.

He loves children very much, but he must scare them.

But, where there are good characters, by all means, there is - Evil!

It hides in the shadows and waits for the right moment to cause you trouble.

Now, look at the shadow behind Grandpa.

Green, evil eyes are looking at you!

To create an evil character, I came in handy with a photo of a black cat hiding in a black room.

I dissolved the black cat's face in black shadow.

The flight of white doves is a good ending to an interesting fairy tale, which symbolizes peace and happiness.

I photographed each pigeon individually, but I decided to use a portion of the collage I had done earlier.

I got a little upset after spending a lot of time cutting out the picture. It was necessary to use the original photograph, there would be less work.

And, perhaps, the last character of this photo collage, this is the wishmaker, or the Golden Fish, which was presented to us by Alexander Pushkin in the Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.

I photographed the fish in my aquarium, the collage was created from a photograph of a small swamp in the village of Topcha.

It will be interesting for me to revive this fish in GIF.

Enjoy your viewing and join this fun and useful competition!

Author @barski
Ukraine

For my publications, I do not use stock photographs, it is fundamentally important for me to use photographs that I have made with my own hands for publication and I can name them - authorial work.

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