Montages come about in a varity of ways, some are preconceived at the time of taking the original picture while others are put together later with a specific end in mind.
In the case of this montage, what started off as a straight print ended up as something entirely different and this sequence of steps will illustrate my thinking as I developed the image.

The starting point was this photograph of barnacles on a rock taken on the east coast of England, I liked the design and planned to make a straight print from the slide.

Having scanned the slide in Photoshop I decided that I was not happy with the picture and determined to try a more artistic version, so I transfered to Corel Painter and made the version below. This was more sucessful but still did not inspire me very much.

As part of the process of making the painterly version I needed a mask to hide the edges of the picture and make the design below using the brushes in Painter, I rather liked the brushy shapes and savied it for future use.

Some weeks later I used this image and using Photoshop made a large number of duplicate layers, flipping each layer to different orientations and using various layer blend modes. I ended up with the design below which gave me the impresson of an angel or heavenly creature (I have a good imagination).

Another few weeks passed before I thought about it again and I decided to try adding some faces to the design, I found this picture of a carving seated in a bed of sand which I had taken some years previously and blended this in the picture.

I felt that it also needed some more textures to distress the image further so I overlaid the picture below which is of a honeycomb rock which I photographed at Elgol on the Isle of Skye.

After experimenting with addition layers in various blend modes the picture below was the result.

I liked the overall design and textures but the background was too hard and obtrusive. I flattened all the layers and took it once again into Painter and made several clone copies it using different brushes.
To complete the picture I merged the Painter clones with the earlier stages and produced the picture at the top of the page.

I think you will agree that it has come a long way from the original picture of barnacles on a rock!