Be Inspired to Compose Artistic Photos

Carlos Herrejón's references will help you create beautiful photomontages

Artistic photo composition, or artistic photomontage, means generating surprising narratives within an image using powerful creative and visual metaphors. The process begins with careful planning and usually involves a great deal of editing.

This is Carlos Herrejón's (@carlos_herrejon) specialty. He creates striking photo compositions that work as conceptual fine art:

As with any other type of creative work, his first step is to thoroughly document and gather up references for the idea he has in mind. These are some of Carlos' key influences:

Brooke Shaden

An american artist whose work primarily explores the juxtaposition between light and darkness. As a self-portrait artist, she presents herself facing her deepest fears, being at the same time the protagonist and the creator of each image.

Carlos was attracted by the surrealism of her images and the use of pictorial elements in her photography, as well as the simplicity and effectiveness of her technique. He soon discovered that Brooke was composing her self-portraits and landscape photographs to achieve fantasy-like results.

Erik Johansson

This photographer and visual artist comes from Sweden and lives in the Czech Republic. In his work, he mixes his own photographs creating fantastic photomontages, often described as surreal. His main focus is on the narrative and making the image look realistic despite its impossible elements.

Carlos Herrejón was attracted to this master of photomontage, considered one of the world's best, when he started creating more complex images. He learned from his attention to detail, his use of color, perspective, and a particular sense of humor.

Olga Cornacchia

This creator takes the detail in her photomontages to another level, creating fantastic creatures and worlds. She describes her work as a world out of a fairy tale, "woven with music, multi-colored glass and pearly bird feathers."

For Carlos, she is one of the most accomplished and intricate artists that he has come across.

If you want to learn more from Carlos Herrejón, sign up for his Domestika course, Artistic Photography Compositing, and learn how to generate creative conceptual images and apply them in a narrative using your photographic compositions.

English version by @angeljimenez.

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