I Used Pixomatic To Edit Myself Into Food

With thousands of photos edited and exported each week, we decided to showcase an awesome Pixomatic user each month on our blog. Do you have a creative, funny, unique, wild, or interesting story to tell with your Pixomatic experience? Email us at [email protected] with the subject line “I Used Pixomatic to...” and have the chance to be featured in our latest blog series each month. 

Rona Ritchie Shepherd from Melbourne, Australia is a 63-year-old Pixomatic creator under our spotlight today. She creates surrealistic photo manipulations and posts them onto her Instagram to entertain and amuse herself and anyone who stops by her page. Rona had done painting and sculpting, but after seeing other photo manipulations, she was inspired to create her own. 

“I discovered Pixomatic and a new hobby was born."

Rona has several photo manipulations where she has edited herself into different kinds of everyday grocery items. Anything from a mountain of donuts, tray of sausages, giant hamburgers, and even a whole chicken (just look up). She mostly prefers to use herself as the main subject of the photo manipulations but also mentions that she’s open to experiment with other people in the future, but for now she sometimes uses her grandchildren or cat. Rona must know that we have a soft spot for cats. 

When it comes to finding inspiration, Rona told us: 

“I love looking at photos that have been manipulated, so I decided to give it a go myself. I get ideas from the internet mostly. Pixomatic stock [photos] gives me ideas.” 

Each post by Rona is a new surprise since she uses a large variety of themes and styles. Viewers don’t have to think long and hard about what the message of the images is because they’re all about letting the imagination roam free and just enjoy. 

“Don’t take life too seriously...I try to incorporate humor into the photos to make myself and others smile.”

There is a diverse range of photo manipulations you can find posted on her Instagram, from funny edits to scary and more abstract creations. She even has a few edits that resemble amusing magazine covers. Rona is open to experimenting with different types of styles as long as she finds it interesting. She thinks to herself, “I can do that, I’ll do that next”. But that’s not all; Rona has many other eye-catching photo edits that are beyond what you can imagine. You can find these, and many more of her unique creations through her Instagram page @ronaritchieshepherd. 

Some of Rona’s work may remind you of miniature photography. This photography style uses tiny figurines and puts them in different situations with real-sized objects. In this egg hill construction site, Rona created nearly a dozen duplicates to create an entire workforce. In miniature photography, the tiny duplicates of Rona would just be small toys. Rona was able to get the style of miniature photography just through photo editing and using herself instead of shooting photos with small toys. 

So how does Rona actually create her surreal photo manipulations? The fastest and easiest way she shrunk herself down to the size of food is by removing the background of separate images and adding them to a completely new background. Rona mostly used the Cut and Clone tools on Pixomatic’s desktop or mobile editors to achieve this. To make sure her imaginative ideas match the result, Rona poses for every manipulation edit. She changes her body pose, hair and makeup, and even props to match the theme of the edit.