Danny Santos II Captures the Diversity of Singapore with Street Composites

All images by Danny Santos II. Used with permission.

Danny Santos II is amazing street photographer that rose up to become an extremely talented professional shooter. Last April we were drawn to his evocative photos of life in Singapore and now we’ve come across Danny’s latest series of street photos with a composite twist.

Titled “Shooting Singapore Street Composites” Danny explained he wanted to blend his creativity with a bit of reality in his latest photo series. “I guess it’s a transition from capturing to creating,” he said.

For his composites Danny set up his tripod in the middle of the busy central business district in Singapore. While people walked past the camera rushing off to work, Danny stood on the sidelines and in the crowds clicking away at his remote trigger for 30 minutes to an hour.

“[I snapped] pretty much anything that stood out and captured my attention,” Danny said. “I was quite particular about motion and variety. Those are the two things that overwhelm you when in the middle of the streets of Singapore.”

More after the jump.

After taking hundreds of frames, Danny said he painstakingly reviewed each one of his images to select which people he wanted to appear in the final composite. Danny could have easily manipulated his images in any way he wanted in Photoshop, however, he constrained himself by making sure every individual remained in the same exact position they were in the original photograph.

“Creating the composites was not as easy as I thought, Danny wrote on his blog. “There was a lot of trial and error and iterations.”

“In fact, one composite usually takes around a full day, and most composites ended up being scrapped as I couldn’t come up with anything interesting with them,” he added.

At the end of Shooting Singapore Street Composites photo series Danny said he had a total of 54 sets, each of which took around 300 to 400 images to create.

“So it was quite a lot of photographs to work with,” Danny quipped. “In the end, I was happy with 14 composite images I’ve published on my website.”

You can check out more of Danny’s work on his website, browse through his portfolio, and Like him on Facebook.