After the winter season, city streets can wreak on your car. Winters in Chicago can be especially harsh: a recent pothole count reached the 600k mark. Sometime in 2013, Chicago artist Jim Bachor decided to rectify this problem with the art of handmade mosaics. While we tend to keep our focus on photo mosaics, we like to keep our ear to the ground with a wide range of mosaic projects. This project in particular really caught my attention.
Advertisements, calendars, photos, greeting cards, and other mail we receive every day can be white noise to our eyes. I found an artist, New York’s Sandhi Schimmel, who took all that junk and turned it into treasure. She collaged unneeded mail to create breathtaking mosaic portraits of women. Her brilliant use of color give these flat images great depth and detail. This is exactly what I love about photo mosaics,
Sandhi Schimmel’s junkmail photo mosaics
One of the most important components of a photo mosaic is the source image. A source image is the bigger picture that the smaller photos (called “cells”) will create. Any photo can be used as a source image, but not just any photo will the completed photo mosaic that WOW factor. The real question is how well the photo will survive the mosaic transformation. For this post, I’ll be focusing on portrait photos. Landscapes, logos, and other non-human subjects will be addressed in future posts, so stay tuned!
When using a photo of people as your source image, it’s important to consider facial recognition. In order for facial shapes and details to survive the photo mosaic transformation, you’ll want the faces to encompass a fairly large portion of the image, measuring at least 1/3 of the width and height of the entire photo. This will allow a great amount of detail and clarity to come through in the photo mosaic. Here are a couple examples of photos that should produce good facial recognition:
Photography is a field I haven’t explored thoroughly but have always appreciated. Capturing a moment in time has always seemed so fascinating. I recently found a photographer who forges moments in time together to create truly stunning collages. Singapore-based photographer Fong Qi Wei started a project “Time is a Dimension” where he wanted to capture a series of moments in a single image.
Fong Qi Wei
Simplicity and design go hand in hand, and what could be more simple than a thumb tack? Eric Daigh creates portrait mosaics using hundreds of thumbtacks. From a distance you see what appears to be a pixelated portrait; up close you see an abstract piece of art made of just a few colors. What’s striking about these hand-crafted portraits is they look like they were created digitally. This concept attracted me because I believe the most impacting pieces of art are the most unconventional. As an artist, the question “why didn’t I think of that?” smacks your forehead.
Eric Daigh
Jerry’s Artarama was looking for a unique, creative angle for their 2012 catalog cover. In the initial discovery phase, they reached out to us to help explore possible directions. The designers at here at Picture Mosaics knew straight away that our trendsetting Multi-size Mosaic technique would result in an extraordinary cover. Utilizing images that Jerry’s Artarama gathered over the years, the very first Multi-size Mona Lisa photo mosaic was born.
With three years of airtime under their belt, ESPN Sportsnation was looking for the perfect way to bring every milestone together into one stunning piece. They contacted us to do just that. Using the well known, and complex, Sportsnation logo as the photo mosaic source image was one of our biggest source image challenges to date. After brainstorming several design techniques, we found a cutting edge solution that met their every expectation.
When Ty and his team at Extreme Makeover Home Edition were looking for that wow piece to bring the whole project together, they quickly realized the photo mosaic concept would be a perfect fit. Since time at EMHE is always critical and need for a piece that exceeded expectations was paramount, the call was put into Picture Mosaics. As soon as we heard about the project, we were on board.
The concept was to create the American Flag using photos of active and veteran women of the armed forces. Once Ty’s team delivered the photos, we were set to begin work one of our more artistic and impactful mosaic murals to date. The lead members of our design team worked around the clock for a total of two days, making sure every photo was optimally placed, colors were true and vivid as possible, and the mosaic was visually impactful as it was meaningful. Please take a moment to explore the photos and video clips below.
To celebrate the 40 year anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s final studio album, Electric Ladyland, Guitar World magazine turned to Picture Mosaics for inspiration. The final photo mosaic design featured a collection of images of Jimi Hendrix to create the original album artwork of Electric Ladyland. The mosaic was featured on the cover of Guitar World’s September issue of 2008.
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