Tuesday, November 10, 2009

My Picture That Lies


In creating the image above, I chose to manipulate two photographs to depict a new scene. These two photographs, downloaded from the Internet, depicted completely different images and were not related when I found them. The first was of an Islamic Mosque in the setting sun, and the other of an American soldier shooting at an unidentified target. I created this picture by inserting the soldier and adjusting the hue, saturation, and brightness of that picture to appear as though he is shooting in front of the Mosque. I blurred the background image of the Mosque, along with adjusting its hue, saturation, and brightness.

This image now conveys a different message. No longer a beautiful landscape or an action shot depicting a soldier during target practice, this image now depicts war and a clash of cultures. Here is a soldier fighting with a sacred, religious icon vividly visible in the background.

I chose to create this image because it tied in with the image I chose to analyze earlier in the semester, which was that of an American soldier and Iraqi man. In that photograph, the image of the soldier was added to the image of the Iraqi citizens. I performed similar adjustments in creating this scene, along with making adjustments for lighting, etc.
Images created or manipulated in times of war are often used as propaganda, and I feel that such use is harmful. It conveys emotions that may not by true and events that may not have even occured using fabricated scenes, as is true of the fabricated evidence used in the scientific paper to falsly depict results, the image I analyzed earlier in the semester, and the image I created, depicted above. In my opinion, such manipulation is always harmful because it decieves, even if the initial intentions of the creator were not malicious.

6 comments:

  1. The picture looks like a real photo. Good job!

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  2. Nice job.. looks liek you spent some time on this

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  3. Nicely done. You blended the two pictures together well.

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  4. Great job! The new background definitely conveys a completely different message.

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  5. I love the composition and its message :)

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