The Art of Horror Photography Photo-manipulation: Part One

If horror photography is your creative poison, then buckle up for this mammoth 4-part series, where I will cover everything you need to know to hit the ground running when it comes to creating horror art!

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you’ll already know I’m completely obsessed with horror photography and dark fantasy art. I chose this creative route for a couple of pretty practical reasons when I first started learning photography. First, my concepts were crazy, way too elaborate to afford all the sets, locations, costumes, and talent they “deserved.” So, photo-manipulation was my cheat code. Second, I wasn’t exactly a pro behind the camera early on (yes, I’ll say it), so shooting isolated elements and piecing them together later in Photoshop made learning lighting and composition a lot easier for me.

I can almost hear someone throwing down their camera right now, yelling, “That’s cheating!” Well fuck you! But also hear me out. This approach didn’t just help me create wild ideas; it taught me how to be a better photographer. Instead of just taking a picture, I had to learn the fundamentals of art...composition, colour, and light. Instead of just capturing what’s in front of me, I learned to design the picture I imagined.

Over this multi-part series, I’ll break down how I think about horror photography photo-manipulation creation: how to plan, how to build narrative, what habits will strengthen your work, and how to merge many separate elements so they look like they were always meant to be together.

FYI: This series is about Horror Photography Photo-manipulation. But these principles will translate to any kind of Photography and Photomanipulation, no matter the genre.

Photography Photomanipulation Isn’t New

Im sure the word “photo-manipulation” has triggered some gray-haired men with overpriced cameras and extremely long lenses, pulling at their nose hair, moaning about how photo-manipulation is art, not photography. You know the ones, the guys who only take photos of birds on sticks, or as I like to call them...Budgie Smugglers.

Photo manipulation isn’t some modern Photoshop trick; it’s been happening since the 1860s. One of the most famous examples is a portrait of President Lincoln that wasn’t entirely Lincoln at all; his head was placed onto the body of a Southern politician (yes, really, the irony writes itself).

Jump ahead to around 1910, and portrait studios were already combining multiple negatives to create a single family photograph when relatives had been photographed on completely different days. Even dictators understood the power of retouching history. Hitler famously had Joseph Goebbels removed from an image in which they originally appeared together.

By the 1980s, even National Geographic altered a landscape to better fit the proportions of its magazine cover.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Photo manipulation has always been part of photography’s story. I’ll spare you the full timeline.

Start with your imagination and some good ol' planning

For me, every image starts long before any camera gets turned on. I always tell workshop students that their imagination is literally their biggest creative asset. You could have the most expensive camera on the planet, but without a clear vision in your head, you might aswell be holding a fancy plastic brick and making clicking noises with your mouth. The longer you spend planning, the easier everything else should be.

There are a fair few stages to previsualisation and planning, so let's break it down.

Brainstorm Everything

Remember at school when you were forced to sit your hyperactive ass still, and do some brainstorming for your school project! Well, for once it's going to come in handy! Grab a blank sheet of paper and write down EVERY idea you have, no matter how crazy, weird, or nonsensical it seems. Let your thoughts run free. Those first scribbles are the seeds of your concept. Make sure you do it on real paper, none of this millennial digital crap. We want to awaken the creative gods of old by putting ink to paper!

The First (and usually worst) Sketch

Once you’ve got your piece of paper and concepts down, start sketching. And trust me, I am the world's worst sketcher, im definitely no Leonardo DaVinci. You don’t need to draw the next Mona Lisa; even properly shite drawings help get your brain out of the “idea fog” and into visual problem-solving mode. This is where you begin to think about composition and how your scene will actually be constructed.

Mood Boards Are Your Friends

Like our brainstorming from a few minutes ago, you probably made mood boards in school. Or maybe you're one of those Pinterest freaks who mood board their entire life out of existence. Anyway, now you get to make mood boards that actually have a point. A mood board is a curation of (usually stolen) images from the internet that help build up the little pieces of your concept visually.

Collect images that convey lighting styles, backgrounds, props, textures, and whatever else matches your vision. Whether you use Pinterest, Photoshop, or good old Google Images, these boards become a guide for you further down the line, especially in the post-processing stage. You're basically creating your own composition guide.

Story

If you want your horror photography photo-manipulation to be more than a pretty-looking photo...give it a narrative. A story can really add depth to what could be a shallow piece of artwork. When you start layering in the finer elements during post-production, having a clear story in your head makes the whole process far more coherent. Those small details won’t feel random; they’ll feel intentional, because they’re serving something bigger.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Alright, calm down, Quentin Tarantino.” Trust me, I’m not pitching for a Hollywood director’s chair, although I wouldn’t say no to a Hollywood budget. But jokes aside, working out your narrative beforehand genuinely strengthens the final image.

When you’ve defined the story, it sits quietly in the background while you’re shooting... guiding how you pose your model, how you shape the light, and even how you frame the scene. Every creative decision becomes easier because you’re not guessing. You’re building toward something specific. Anytime you need to make a decision, go back to the story!

The Second (slightly better) Sketch

Now that you’ve gathered ideas, visuals, and narrative direction, go back to your sketch. Flesh it out. Improve it. Add notes. This iteration makes the vision clearer and helps you think three-dimensionally about the shot. Start to think about more advanced composition in this sketch.

Gather Reference Images

The last step in my planning process is collecting proper reference material. By this stage, you should already have a refined sketch, a clear narrative, and mood boards that define the tone and direction. You know what you’re building. Now it’s time to gather images that help you execute it.

Reference images aren’t the same as mood boards. Mood boards spark ideas and shape the concept. References are practical tools. They sit beside you while you work and help you recreate reality accurately. They’re there to solve problems, not inspire them. This is something I’ve borrowed from traditional painters...they constantly study real-world references to make their work believable.

Let’s say your concept takes place on a dark, mysterious, snowy night, with your subject standing beneath a street lamp, an axe in hand. You could try to imagine how that scene looks and how the light behaves… or you could look it up. Search for photos of lamps in snowfall at night and study what actually happens. You’ll notice how snowflakes closest to the light glow brighter, and how that illumination falls away gradually in a soft circular spread. That observation alone gives you a blueprint to follow in Photoshop. Instead of guessing, you’re replicating something real.

And you can apply this to anything. How does fog interact with light spilling from a window? How does backlight affect rain? Look it up. Study it. Recreate it.

In (Horror) photography photomanipulation, we’re essentially convincing the viewer that this fake scene is real. The more accurately you handle the subtle details, the easier it is to sell the illusion. Whether that’s a lone figure running through a jungle trying to escape a crazed gorilla, or light as it breaks through scattered leaves of a tree...or something simpler like lens flare. Realism in the small things makes the impossible believable.

So my fellow ghouls, that’s Part One, your roadmap for thinking through your Horror Art before you even lay a grubby mitt on your camera. Planning like this not only saves time, but it also helps you create stronger and more believable photo-manipulation work. In Part Two, we’ll dig into the rules I follow to make sure every element feels like it belongs together.

Catch you soon!

Stay creepy!

Clinton.