Hire a Real Artist to Make Your Personalized Photo Collage

Eleven photos from Curtis's family collaged together by digital

artist Nancy Gershman and then set against a brand new sky.

Behind every artistic product is an artistic mind, not a web-based graphic service advertising "personalized collage art." Look a little closer and you’ll see that what these services are actually promising are art effects, not art.

If you want original, custom artwork and not a stock photo image you've seen on somebody's coffee mug, stick with real artists, not designers paid to offer off-the-shelf effects with photo collage or mosaic-making software. Employees, afterall, are not paid to be artists who think freely, out of the box. That's why you want to find a digital artist for hire who can:

• critically select photographs on the basis of quality, not quantity
• extract elements, re-juxtaposing them for aesthetic/conceptual reasons
• give special thought to hierarchies of lighting and scale
• search for fresh images for geographical/historical accuracy
• inject meaningfulness and a goal into the artistic composition

Digital Artists Who Do Art For Your Sake

Let's say you want a custom photo collage made from your personal photos. You've got three options. If you go to a graphic service company, they'll take your order (as long as it’s listed in their website drop-down menu of special effects). If you go to an artist who only does art for art's sake, they'll want you to leave them alone so they can create their own idea of what's art (but at your expense, and in their own sweet time).

But if you're lucky enough to find a digital artist who takes commissions - who does art for your sake, you're in business! She'll ask you questions that go above and beyond the call of duty:

Is there a special message you want to convey? Or a take-away impression you want to leave with the person you're making it for? Should the collage concentrate on the past, present or future, or all three? What about adding some wishful reality to the piece, creating a landscape that’s rich in meaning? Do I have permission to look for a better backdrop that would make your images really pop?

The digital artist for hire who creates custom artwork for your sake is serious about the images she selects and combines for you, because she is always raising the bar for herself and the art world. Commissioning an artist specializing in custom photo collage to make you a personalized photo collage portrait or custom photo gift is kind of like hiring a world class artist, photographer, curator and confidante, rolled into one.

Is Hiring a Custom Photo Collage Artist Costly?

When it comes to personalized digital photomontage, my advice is to always hire an artist who 1) has a considerable digital photo collage portfolio; 2) who takes the time to look at your photos and talk with you before you take out your credit card, and 3) who lets you pay in installments if you have to.

Then when you're ready to order your personalized collage gift like a portrait or a popout made from your photos, it may cost you a touch more, but your labor of love is going to be worth a fortune!

To get an idea of what I mean by artistic photo collage, stop by my online studio, Art For Your Sake. Or let's brainstorm over the phone: 773-255-4677.