My Own Private Army

This is also a picture of my brother— except with his riot shotgun in my face. This picture inspires a sense of fear, and I love how my brother’s eyes are hard and cold. The image is filtered in photoshop, to make it stylistic and blurry. 

The picture is my brother and one of his friends. This was taken a few days after his birthday, for which I bought him the gas mask that he is wearing in the picture. His friend was so enamoured of the gift that he went out and bought himself one! The picture was taken in the hallway at my house, and both of the weapons belong to my brother, as does the camouflage. I filtered the image in photoshop and layered it to get the surreal effect. I was going for stylistic– something that you would see on a poster. I like how the editing affected my brother’s camouflague, it looks more like tiger stripe camo now than the new pixelated camo. The affect of the filter on the hands was something I was exceptionally pleased with, because it looked like someone drew it, which was what I was looking to accomplish. All in all, not something I would ever want to encounter in real life. 

This is also a picture of my brother in my hallway. Same day, same story, different image. The Nuclear explosion in the background comes from here. This is just something I thought would be humorous, and it was. I love that my brother is doing the peace sign in the image– it makes the picture satirical, and it makes him seem more humanized, while the gas mask produces the opposite effect. The blacked out eyes and the hidden face dehumanize him– more of a monster than anything else. The reflection is scary… The concept of witnessing your own demise as the last thing you see is chilling. But, in the end, the image produces an ironic message using black humor. Mission accomplished.