Impossible Picture: Bush & Me

With the impossible picture assignment I thought about media’s manipulation of images and the distortion of time and place. Forest Gump quickly came to mind and served as inspiration for my work. Of course, I understand that if you don’t know me perhaps this photo is not so impossible, but that was my draw. Had we not known Forest Gump, seeing footage of him next to president Kennedy would not have seemed impossible at all. So I went with an impossible image that is very possible for the average media consumer to believe.

There were many layers to making this work. While learning the tools of photoshop are very important to digital design I could not set aside the importance of the original shots in the creation of media design. Meaning, first, I constructed the image in my head and very carefully took the photo of myself so that it would fit just right. In digital imaging I believe media design must begin at the original shot composition and then manipulated with photoshop to achieve maximum success. Of course, there was much layering, resizing, reshaping, color correction, feathering and healing tool involved in pulling it all off. One mistake I made (which I thought would help) was shooting my picture in front of a green screen. It turned out to be difficult to mask out the green so a lot of work needed to be done to get a clean layer without green fringes. Overall, I was pleased with the results.