As a biologist working frequently with light and electron microsopy, I've been assembling plates of digital micrographs in Adobe Illustrator for several years. Although there are obviously constraints inherent in work intended for scientific publication, I still enjoy the creative process of working with these. Some of them in fact are quite beautiful.
I am interested in getting started in making large (11x17" or larger) composite plates of my photographs, both from my new digital camera and from scanned 35 mm slides. Do any of you regularly make composite plates? I would be interested in your thoughts and any recommendations for books and articles dealing with issues pertaining to layout, proportions of white space to photographs, and juxtaposition of contrasting (or similar) colors, subjects, shapes, etc.