“Good ole’ Forrest Gump. He always manages to find himself at the center of history, and using photo editing software, so can you. Find a historic photograph and place yourself into the scene, just like Forrest Gump.”

Recognize this photo? Yeah, I was there! It was me!

Honestly, doing these kinds of assignments has really improved my visual art skills. It takes quite a bit of skill and knowledge to be able to compose these kinds of photos, and it took me a while to really grasp onto the techniques. At first, I was thinking about doing something tame, kind of like a recent photo of some important political event, but I think that these sorts of photos with VERY powerful people and a teenage girl photoshopped in there with them really got me thinking. Even though it was gonna be a bit harder, I figured that the challenge is good! It’s a great way to learn more and get better at a skill.

For my final visual assignment, I Forrest Gumped myself into a historical scene. The comedian Norm MacDonald died recently, and one of his most famous comedic legacies was endlessly mocking OJ Simpson and his infamous murder trial while on SNL. As a result, the first historical scene that popped into my mind was OJ Simpson’s murder trial (especially since it occurred after the release of Forrest Gump yet is now an event that is far enough back in time to be considered history now).

Here was the photo I chose:

For this, I once again used Photoshop. I decided instead of putting my entire body into the photo, I would simply use my head to replace the head of the man standing in the foreground (arms crossed). I had one of my roommates take a picture of me, tilting my head and matching my eye line with the man in the picture. Next, I imported the original photo and the picture of me into Photoshop. I cropped my head out of the photo and then sized it and rotated it slightly to make it match the body. Finally, I softened the picture of my head to mimic the fact that the man in the picture is out of focus.

And voilà!

Hello, and welcome back to my blog! This assignment is called “The Forest Gump Project” by Bill Genereux. It is worth 3.5 stars and contains the description: “Good ole’ Forrest Gump. He always manages to find himself at the center of history, and using photo editing software, so can you. Find a historic photograph and place yourself into the scene, just like Forrest Gump.”

I decided to slip myself into the Enchantment Under the Sea prom in Back to the Future (1985). I play guitar with Marty McFly and the band, though as you can see, I play an instrument of the future: a Guitar Hero/Rock Band guitar for the Wii. It would be pretty great to ‘play’ with them, and to make a cameo representing the future. I will walk my audience through my process, which was done on Pixlr Editor.

Me and the boys raising the flag at Iwo Jima.

I love using photoshop, and especially when it involves photoshopping myself into photos so I was excited for this assignment. When I was looking for a picuture to photoshop myslef I found two I really liked so I decided to use both.

The first one was a picture of President Kennedy with his wife. I chose this one because it was an older photo and I wanted to challenge myself to be able to edit my picture to match the old photo. To achieve this I put a black and white filter on the photo and then increased the “grain” of the photo to give it an older effect. I circled myself in the background because I ended up being a little smaller than I though I’d be.

My second photo I decided to go with a more recent photo of some other Presidents, Obama, both of the Bush’s, and Clinton. I’m not gonna lie, I chose this photo just because I wanted to be in a photo with Obama. I was able to make myself a bit bigger and easier to see in this one.

I really enjoyed this assignment. I was able to utilize and continue to improve on my photoshop skills. I’m hoping I’ll be able to use more photoshop in other assignments this week.

PS: This was a 3.5 star assignment…8.5 left for the week!

For the Forrest Gump project, I superimposed my face over a Philadelphia . The 1983 finals ended in a 4 game blowout where the Los Angeles Lakers had no chance. The significance of this series isn’t too important to the game of basketball, the events that followed altered the course of NBA history. For the rest of the decade the NBA finals always included The Boston Celtics with Larry Bird, or the Los Angeles Lakers with Magic Johnson. The Larry Bird and Magic Johnson era serves as a cornerstone to the evolution of how the game is played. Without this fierce rivalry the league might have lagged behind other sports, thus we might not have superstars like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James.

This is really my first time messing around with some type of photo editing software, but after I while I’ll be able to make sure my neck doesn’t come out with two different colors.

You ever see those old — like Renaissance old — paintings set side by side with famous people of today and the person in the painting looks exactly like the celebrity? Yeah, that’s because it is the celebrity. Okay here’s my admission. There’s a small group of immortals roaming the Earth. We tend to become famous because immortality can get really, really monotonous, and we like doing exciting things that attract attention. But we’re starting to encounter problems. At first, like in the 1800s, photography was just an interesting novelty. As it became more popular, some of us started showing up in the paper periodically. This was my first encounter with that situation. So there I was, in the hallway trying to catch a glimpse of that assassin, Oswald they called him. Then some nut job jumped out and shot him. The photographer caught his (and my) reaction right as the bullet struck. What are the chances?

So, how’d I do it?

First, I selected the images, importing them into Photoshop. The one you know, I’m sure. Here’s the other:

It’s me holding my friend’s baby (pretending she made a stinky). First, I discarded the color information, then selected the copy portion using the magnetic lasso tool with feathering set to 5. I copied and pasted the selection onto the Oswald image, then sized and positioned it using the transform tool. I darkened it and added some pixelation using the noise tool to better match pixelation in the image. I trimmed the neck to make it fit into the man’s collar and also used the clone stamp tool to remove a little of his chin and nose. Finally, I used the smudge tool around the edged of the pasted selection to smooth out the edges.

I added my hockey photo to a 1962 photo of a hockey game Blackhawks verses Maple Leafs. During the game a player lost his contact lens and they stopped the game to look for it. I chose this because it is not your typical history picture and I have pictures of me playing hockey. I also wear contacts so I can relate. This is the first time I have ever edited myself into a picture. I did it on my iPhone with a free adobe photoshop app. I think it would be easier to do it on the computer.