If a picture's worth a thousand words, then this portrait montage is worth... counting it up... at least sixteen thousand words.

But that's an underestimate, because if you ask portrait and fine art photographer Michael Gilbert about any one of his images shown here, you'll get a fantastic creative-process back story that will make you never want to stop asking him for more words.

His stories about some of the invidual images shown here will appear in future posts soon. First, Michael talks about the montage itself:

Aloha. I like to collect old photographs and old postcards – the kind you find in antique stores and flea markets. I especially love old photo albums from the 1880s-1930s, with the cool black photo corners. I find them inspiring. I like the way people would write on the album pages in that old English script, back when everyone had beautiful penmanship. And I love the way people used to put several photos together on the pages, making montages with all kinds of mementos and things.

To me, my montage shown here is a modern take on the old album-making style, using clean lines and simple design. It shows several small prints of some of my commissioned portrait photography on a two-page spread that I made using a Kolo Luxury Cortina photo album. Showing so many portraits together like this illustrates how different one portrait can be from another.

I took this close-up of the layout to use on postcards to promote my lectures and seminars on portrait photography.

Michael Gilbert will conduct a Dynamic Portrait seminar in Victoria, British Columbia Nov. 8th and Vancouver, British Columbia on Nov. 9th. For more about these two seminars, visit www.lensandshutter.com

- Ugo