William Mortensen at Buckland Museum

William Mortensen’s manipulated photographs are on exhibit at the Buckland Museum in Cleveland. The exhibition, titled “Witches” is just in time for Halloween. Mortensen began his career as a glamor and film still photographer in the 1920s. He soon turned to darker themes influenced by horror films. But it was his pictorialist compositing techniques that caused the photography-purist Ansel Adams to call him the Anti-christ.

The exhibition and venue are featured on WCPN Ideastream. The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick was founded in New York in 1966 and relocated to Cleveland in 2015. More about William Mortensen here. More details about the exhibition here.

Select and Mask Tutorial Video

This video will demonstrate the Select and Mask workspace. It allows you to extract a figure from an image – stray hairs and all – and nondestructively place them into a scene.

For best results the figure should be photographed against a plain backdrop.

For a full screen version: See the tutorial on YouTube.