Continuing on with our photoshop, image editing, part of the 52 week challenge, this week I’ve been looking at the interaction of text in images. We’re used to seeing images and text together, usually the text is helping to define or complement the photo in some way. So I decided to use a photoshop technique know as textualising on an image.

My first attempt (the flowers) was a bit of a half hearted attempt I’m afraid, the text itself comes from the Bible (Matthew 6 v28-29) and the background text is from a poem about tulips. It’s the sort of image that you’d see on a ‘Very Christian’ poster, and although as a Christian I believe in the Bible, I think my use of it over the top of the flowers to be rather cheesy! But hey, I took the photo especially for this….and I don’t think it worked for me personally, but I’m sure there are some people who will love it!

My second attempt, was a bit more self focused, looking at myself, what I do, who I am. The original photo was taken a while back in my studio after another studio photo shoot. But by creating layer after layer of text in photoshop and editing the text until the original image was covered, added some colour casting lights and then finished it all off by totally removing the image and leaving only text. I quite like the effect, it’s bright, colourful (a bit of what I wanted to achieve with the flowers) and made entirely of text!

By this stage I was getting intrigued at what other ideas and things I could do with the text, so I used a much more contrasty photo I took recently of Hollie Fulton in my studio against a black background, and worked from there using random background text and layering that over and over itself so that it’s almost illegible, but interspersing it and laying out key words around her face and hands so that the light catches it and makes it look 3D. Again totally removing the image at the end so that only the text is visible, I didn’t add colour like the previous image as the black and white photograph really works for me here giving us beautiful contrast and the lighting giving the whole image an almost sculpted feel.

I’d love to hear what you think about these edits, click through to our facebook page to let us know.