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Family Photo Projects

Building layer upon layer of parts of a photograph creates real, not implied, dimension in the scene. Although you can't see the depth in our illustration, in actuality, various elements in the scene are elevated at different heights to give depth. To do it, you need to begin with a picture that has elements at different distances from the camera. That is, it should have a strongly delineated foreground, middle ground, and background. Landscapes work especially well, but other images will also work. The dimensional effect is achieved by cutting out parts of several identical photos and elevating them with foam mounting tape. The best way to display the completed work is in a shadow box.

• Three, four, or more copies of the photograph; 8 x 10 is a good size.
    
• Shadow box to fit the photographs.
    
• Small, sharp scissors, such as a craft scissors or manicure scissors
    
• Double-sided foam mounting tape

1. The original scene will be your background. See illustration A.

2. On one copy of the photo, cut part of the picture away from background. Cut on well-defined edges. See illustration B.

3. On another copy of the photo, cut away the foreground area, again looking for well-defined edges. See illustration C.

4. Cut strips of mounting tape about one-inch long. Adhere them at various places on the backs of your cut-out photos. One layer of tape won't give you much dimension, so you'll probably want to stack three and four pieces of tape on top of each other.

5. Remove the protective backing from the tape on the middle-area photo and carefully align it on top of the background picture.

6. Remove the protective backing from the tape on the foreground-area photo and carefully align it on the middle photo.

7. You can add an element from a different photograph. I liked the foreground rocks in another photograph I took of the Cache la Poudre River (illustration D); I cut out the
rocks (illustration E) and adhered them with dimensional tape to the composite. It works because they are the right size and the lighting is similar.

8. Frame your work.

Three is the minimum number of layers to work with, but you can add many more as long as the cutting areas are well defined (and as long as your patience holds out!). Before adhering your layers of photographs, place them on the background and decide if you want greater thicknesses of tape. You can add elements from other pictures, but make sure the size is in the right proportion and the direction of the light is the same as the background.

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