Pictures that Lie

For this project I decided to use photographs i had previously taken to create a false image.These three photographs were taken this summer in various places. The background is of San Miguel de Allende, the llama is stuffed and was outside the Peru stand at a World's Fair in Mexico City, and the guy holding a fish was one I took of a friend's brother after he caught a fish this summer. In order to get this result I basically used the magic extractor to extract both the llama from the background and the guy from the boat and the ocean. I then placed them into the background image and continued editing from there. Other tools I used are the erase tool, the clone stamp tool and lighting and color saturation.
     This image was manipulated because I had this picture of the llama and I thought at first it would be interesting to put it in a setting where llamas don't usually roam around. After doing so I thought well this is too plain, I should add something to it to look even more false, so then the idea of a centurion came about. I looked around my photographs for the perfect image, and this is what I chose to add as the human part of the animal. In the end, I think it is quite comical, but it truly doesn't hurt anyone.
The article I researched was an interesting view on images from the Afghanistan and Iraq War, questioning whether they were real or fake in important publications such as the New York Times and Time. This article suggests that magazines and newspapers are not the only ones to falsify images, but terrorists themselves do so aswell. It is important that these images are not falsified because it truly gives a false sense of what is happening in the war and is so easy to believe since it is so far away from our reality.It is quite unfortunate to know that you can easily falsify a photograph solely by using photo shop. Although my photograph does not harm anyone and is obviously false, using photoshop and such programs to change a photograph can truly do much harm.

Munro, Neil. "Real or Fake?." National Journal 38.14 (2006): 26-32. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.