Unit 32 Experimental Photography Foot prints in the sand

Foot prints in the sand

Each of us can leave behind footprints in the sand of time

“Lives of great people remind us we can make our lives sublime and, departing, leave behind footprints in the sand of time.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Digital Image captured on Formby Beach Image 1

Scanned Image 2

Scanned Image 3

Scanned Image 4

Scanned Image 5

Screen Shot of the image developing in Photoshop

Each of us can leave behind footprints in the sand of time

“Lives of great people remind us we can make our lives sublime and, departing, leave behind footprints in the sand of time.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.



There are people who look at themselves and admonish any notion of becoming a person of substance or value, simply because of their circumstances. They adjust their goals and ambitions solely based on the achievements of others in their family or their financial situation. They automatically discount the notion that they too can one day become great, before their lives have really begun.

Greatness isn’t something that’s thrust upon you. You become great by the type of person you are, and what you accomplish during your time here, not by whom your parents are or how much money you’re born into.

You become great by living a sublime existence: by leading a life of high moral and intellectual value. You make your life sublime by inspiring awe and admiration in others, from your deeds and words. You live an existence that’s elevated in nature.

Being famous, rich, or even a leader doesn’t aspire someone to greatness. Throughout history, there are many more rich and famous who’ve been forgotten than poor ones who are remembered.

There are some who are remembered by what they did. That doesn’t mean they’ve become great. It simply means their actions, good or bad are remembered. Their name is associated with those actions.

The truly sublime are remembered for who they are. What they accomplish becomes secondary.

The sand of time is history. When someone leaves behind footprints in the sand of time, they are leaving behind imprints, of themselves or their actions, in history. These imprints, or footprints, last for generations. They become memories, footprints, which may never disappear, or take centuries to disappear.

All of us can leave behind a piece of ourselves to be remembered after we die, by acknowledging the fact that it is within our means to do so. You do so by leading a life whose main purpose is to benefit humanity. When you put humanity before yourself, the path to greatness will open itself to you. When you take that path, you too will leave behind footprints in the sand of time.

This quote is an excerpt from a poem Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first published in 1838 in the Knickerbocker Magazine called ‘A Psalm of Life”.

From Wikipedia

Evaluation and Creation of the Montage

I remembered this poem form a English lesson at school, so when I went to Formby Beach and captured image 1; I developed several ideas. I began to experiment with several ideas for a montage using the digital images and the physical things like shells, feathers, seaweed etc that I had collected.

The poem talks about the foot print that you leave behind as a person and how people remember you after you are gone.

The impact you have made on people and their lives, the memories created that last in peoples hearts and minds.

I wanted to convey the life one has lived. I developed the idea with some meaning full text.

I tried to achieve this by getting my friend Lilli to write about in Persian about life and death. I chose to have the text in Persian because it has elegant curves and it looked different and interesting.

She wrote on white paper, to give the paper texture I crunched into a small ball and then smoothed it out again.

I then stained it with coffee and scanned it to create a digital image.
The shells and various other thing collected on the beach were also scanned.

The final montage image was created with layer blending, masking and opacity density composting tools.

I used the colour burn, overlay, darken to get the yellow texture tones in the image.