Art 265
2/7/2014
Critical Thinking
Photo Illusionist “We create the illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. And when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.” said young adult author Libba Bray. It is so hard these days to look through pictures on the internet and wonder what is actually real and what is not. We have all seen photos that are photo shopped, some are hilarious, and others are tearjerkers. On the lower, left hand side of the collage, you will see a photo of my husband, Bill, out in front of our house. The second photo used to create my final image is found on the lower right. I originally found the picture of the tiger licking the gal online. I printed the image, then took a picture of that image. First I used a photo editing program online to cut my husband away from the background. I then imported the photo of the tiger into the program and set it as the background layer. In order to make the two images fit, I needed to flip Bill’s image so that his cheek was being licked, not the back of his head. I covered the original person the best I could with my husbands profile. There was still quite a bit of her hair showing, so then I got to work cloning. I set the marker on one of the bars by the tigers face and placed the second section of the cloning tool above where Bill’s hair. I cloned the wall and bar above his head. All in all it turned out to be a fun picture. My two sons both liked the final picture and we spent the afternoon looking for more funny pictures Pinterest.com. We had a great time, just laughing and sharing photos back and forth. While this assignment was a fun and playful task, many times the use of image manipulation is quite controversial. Photos in which wrinkles, freckles and fleshiness are erased. When these images are touched up, the models and celebrities appear younger, fresher and thinner. One article even mentions a Ralph Loren advertisement where