For my project I wanted to create a piece that would evoke questions such as “how?” and “why?” from the viewer. To accomplish this I found a photo that was already quite unbelievable (bottom), and then I made it even more unbelievable by removing the only plausible explanation as to what caused the phenomena of the airborne man seen. Without context, it is not clear that the man is just enjoying a day at the beach with some friends. Perhaps instead he is falling into the water due to a rather unfortunate accident. Or perhaps his ankles have the ability to fly, and are dragging along the rest of his body with them…
The majority of the work on this project was removing tiny white specks of water droplets with spot healer. The other was adding some variance to the water which replaced the Bro-Launching Dude Squad™, which proved a much more tedious and difficult task than I had anticipated.
I love your “lore” behind this image. It’s fun to imagine the how and why. I like your use of using the existing ocean to replace the hole where the guys used to be. Nice Job
Your subtraction of the people in the water is very effective. It is impressive that there is no faint outline where the people used to be.
This is very interesting because the photoshop has completely changed the composition. The image is very unique now because it’s making me wonder what’s going on outside the frame. Could he have jumped off a pier or out of a low helicopter? It truly makes one wonder how he got there!
I think you evoked your question well. It is somewhat difficult to understand what’s going on in the piece when there’s only one person left in the scene. I can, however, see some traces of the erased dude squad at the edges of where they used to be. I think it raises more questions than were there originally, especially since now I’m wondering why the squad seems to have left a dimensional watermark on the hapless floating man’s part of the ocean. I’d say the work still captures the spirit of the original idea.
How and why indeed… Technically speaking the water has been exceptionally well repaired where the aforementioned squad was. For an even more perplexing image, I wonder if some of the left side could be moved to the right. This would center the airborne man and suggest that nothing else could even have been the focus originally. A whole new level of being “left hanging” has just been reached.
This is a very well done piece. Besides a few blemishes, which I imagine would be hard to cover up, it’s almost a perfect subtraction and reproduction of the water where those guys used to be