This background was quite interesting. I chose it because it contrasts with his own personality physically and mentally. For example, Stephen Harper is obviously not this well built nor would he be seen or pose shirtless and advertise for Calvin Klein so its interesting to see his head on this new body. It puts him in a position that’s out of his comfort zone. Another reason was because there is a tattoo on this body (David Beckham) with the name “Harper”. Its also funny to see his head on an iconic soccer player. Also all the tattoos contrast with Stephen Harper’s personality, he of course, not having tattoos. I hope. Especially the tattoo of himself, it can make him seem as selfish and thinking a lot of himself. A lot of his decisions, he did not consider the public and the countries opinion. So adding the tattoo of him self shows him thinking much of himself as a strong character with the cigar.
To begin I used the quick select tool and selected Stephen Harpers head, then separated it from the rest of his body and copied it to the Beckham background. For his face to match the background I brought down the saturation to be black and white like the background. Then I used the free transform and resized and rotated his head to overlay Beckham’s with the correct sizing and again using the clone stamp to cover any parts of Beckham’s face that were sticking out. Once I was please with that I looked at the chin and used the burn tool to darken some parts of Harper’s chin to match the shadows beneath it and the same with Beckham’s neck, I added some shadows to be able to match the position of Harper’s head. This allowed the picture to be more believable, feeling the shadows and the head properly matched together. I then slightly darkened some parts of Harpers head to match the lighting so the picture seemed in more unity. Also I went on the picture of cowboy Stephen Harper selected his face with the clone stamp then returned to the body of Beckham and clicked on the area of his chest under the black and white with a 60 opacity and it added the tattoo effect. Finally I played with the brightness and contrast to and unity to the colour and brightness of the different photos.
