A doting dad has created a giant wall-to-ceiling mosaic of his two young children – using 2,000 photographs of them as they were growing up.
Matt Travill, 33, created the 42sq ft masterpiece after he failed to decide on his favourite pictures of his son Kyan, nine, and five-year-old daughter Taya.
The creative single dad arranged the images by colour to create the collage in the front room of their home in Northampton.
The giant mosaic is made up of around 1,500 individual images and another 420 copies of group pictures of the family.
To make the mosaic, Matt used picture-editing program Photoshop to compile the photographs, before sending them off to a professional printing firm to be put together.
The courier then delivered the picture – which came in a flat-pack form – on the same day as Matt’s 33rd birthday, January 12.
Warehouse worker Matt said: “I love photography and I’m always taking pictures, mainly of the children and days out we have.
“We had moved into this house over a year ago now and I’d not put a single picture up.
“I was sat looking at the big blank wall in the living room and I thought it was silly that with all the photography I have done I hadn’t even got a picture up.
“I have thousands of photos of the kids on my computer, so I set about going through the photos to find one I could get printed professionally and framed on the wall, but it was so hard just to choose one. I just couldn’t decide.
“A few years ago, I saw a picture of Bob Marley online that was made up of hundreds of smaller photos.
“It made me wonder if I could do something similar, and I was inspired to create my own design.
“I like being creative so in the end I chose a really nice shot that I had captured one afternoon last September, when I had photographed Kyan and Taya doing some colouring in the sun. It was a very nice, peaceful shot that I thought would work well.
“So I put it into a grid and split it up into 1,920 different squares, each about four by six centimetres.
“I picked photos that were similar colours so that they would blend well for the final piece.
“Then I went through all our pictures and started putting them in.
“This has allowed me to put a personal mark on our home.”
The grid is a 40×40 square but Matt had to split some of the images in half in order to ensure he recreated the original image as meticulously as possible.
He added: “It took me around two weeks to make it, but once I had started I was determined to finish it.
“I had to keep redoing it and chopping some of the squares in half to ensure it looked like the original image. In the end I think I changed the design about nine times.
“I know it is a little blurry in places but I think I have got the overall look of it there now.
“When Kyan saw it he ran to get his sister and then they both stood in awe looking at it. I’m really pleased with the finished thing and it was worth all the effort.
“They love going up close to the mosaic and remembering all the nice memories we have had over the last year or so.
“I put an acrylic spray over the top to stop them trying to tear it down or damage it. I’m worried they will draw on it soon.”
ENDS
