The Weyburn Wheat Festival committee unveiled their project from the 2015 event, a photo collage made into the Canadian flag, at the Weyburn Public Library on Wednesday.
Maureen Clay of the Wheat Festival committee noted that fellow committee member Christine Cooper, an employee at the Public Library at the time, had the idea of taking photos of Weyburn residents, and incorporating them into a collage of the flag to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Canadian flag.
Photographer Jon Gillies set up a photo booth at the library with both a red and white background, and saw around 500 area residents drop by as individuals or groups to have their photos taken for the project. The final product is a three-foot by six-foot collage comprised of around 190 images, which will now go on permanent display at the library.
“What impressed me is that many people who are new to the community came down because they wanted to be a part of the project,” said Gillies, estimating it took him about 20 hours of work on the computer to Photoshop the photos and arrange them into the flag design.
He noted he had to choose which background worked best for each person or group, and he also had to make sure the red or white background was consistently the same.
“It was a photoshopping challenge, more than I expected,” he added.
Many of those who came in also did a fun shot by dressing up, and those shots are all on his Facebook page, Images by Gillies, as is the collage itself.
