Week 37: Street

Composite photos were inspired by Kevin Meredith, one of my favorite photographers.

Photos were taken during our first week of Community Medicine rotation at St. Hannibal Christian Center in Pasay City.

Readers have been asking how I make these portraits:

I use any camera, ask the subject to stay still for at least 15 to 20 seconds, then take serial snapshots of the entire body. I manually stitch the photos using GIMP (the open-source, Linux version of Photoshop) using the layers function. This is where much of the fun is—piecing together the pieces is therapeutic for me. I do it with music playing in the background.

I prefer using phone cameras because they're lightweight, and the images look raw—grainy and pixellated. And I happen to like this amateurish effect, which adds to the charm.