For our third project we did something called a photographic truth. We had to put ourselves in 6 pictures from history that all related to a theme. We then had to figure out how we wanted to put ourselves in the picture. We had to have our pictures taken in the specific pose for the photo we were going to put our image in. In order to do this first we needed to find 6 pictures that we wanted ourselves to be in and then use the tools to make it look like we were actually in the picture. To me "photographic truth" refers to how pictures aren't always what they seem, that a picture can be altered so that it's meaning can be changed and that the "truth" of a photo isn't always true.
The images I chose were of the San Francisco 1906 earthquake. In one of the pictures I replaced the head of the person in the picture with my own. When I had my picture taken I had to have my head angled the same way as the person I was replacing. Then I had to match the color scheme of the picture and the quality of it. The picture was black and white and the color wasn't that good, so I had to blur my picture a bit. For the other pictures I didn't just replace someone's head with my own, I actually put my entire self in them. Despite this the steps I took to do this were pretty much the same. The tools I used were the magnetic lasso, the blur filter, and variations for the color changing.
The theme I chose was the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The reason I chose this theme was that I knew it would be easy to put myself in the pictures, but also because that earthquake really interests me and the pictures were fascinating. Even the ones that I didn't use showed how horrible the destruction this earthquake caused. There were pictures of buildings collapsing and how people had to basically live off the streets after this. My presence in these pictures didn't really alter the meaning of them, but I don't think I would have been able to do that because just putting someone in a picture like this changes that this happened and the damage was real.
What I learned from this project was that you can't always trust a picture, because when everybody was done, almost all of the pictures looked real, like they had actually been there. I liked this assignment because it was fun putting myself in a picture and basically altering history. This project wasn't that difficult, but I did have some trouble with a couple of the pictures. The picture where I replaced someone's head was slightly troublesome in that it was difficult to size my head so that it fit the picture without looking like it didn't belong where it was. The last picture I worked on caused me the most trouble because it wouldn't accept my picture. I never really found out why, but I got it to work and that's all that really matters. I feel as though I was successful in this project, but I'm not really sure that I would do anything different.
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