(Apologies to Robert Smigel for the title.)
Yesterday, Cmae noted in a comment to Laura Clawson’s frontpage mug shot story that,
"If you place your hand over each side of his face in the mugshot, you can see two different emotions happening at the same time. Fear on the right and anger on the left. At least to me."
so I loaded the soon-to-be-most-copied-portrait-ever into Photoshop and did some quick mirror views. The scale’s off because he made sure not to give the camera full face. Still, definitely two separate personality presentations.
Since I had his loathsome mug loaded up anyway, I decided to poke around with some filters, see what else might come to light.
Finding and amping up his makeup colors in a gradient map yielded the image I think he was really trying to project. Very Big Brotherish. Definitely improves the suit.
I especially liked this one, setting a harsh threshold. It looks like Gerald Ford doing an impression of Nixon behind his back.
I goosed the red filter to lose some of his orangyness and the vibe went totally sideways into teen idol portrait land. The font is, of course, Vladimir Script.
While thus noodling, I remembered Lunapic dot com’s Cubist filters and wondered what Himself would look like through the “Picasso” effect. The result yielded, to my eye, a very different 20th Century notable.
On reflection, I wonder if that’s who Himself was shooting for to begin with.
Thanks for sharing this moment of pointless photo phun. Have a great weekend!