Open Your Eyes: From a Child's Point of View

This boy is standing alone in front of a big shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand.
Why do his eyes look frightened? What does he see?

He sees... us.

He sees masses of anonymous grown-ups busily passing by, using their elbows to push others away. He sees a world where everyone just cares for themselves and the only rule is the survival of the strongest. He sees his own future. Or does he?

We all are responsible for the next generation. It’s our duty to be good role models and for making the children feel welcome in our world, so that they are guided to adulthood without having to be afraid of the future. It's not just the parents' responsibility.

Interestingly enough, tribal societies used to raise children as if they were all the parents of that child. It didn't start being an individual process until recently. However, some still do that today. And if you ask me, they are the richest societies.

Open Your Eyes: Stormy Life

This photo was taken in Bangkok during the rainy season.

Warm summer rain, how romantic.
Surrounded by speeding cars and their exhaust fumes, the woman has to carry a heavy load through the rain to the shop she’s working at, which is about 500 meters away on the other side of the road. No-one is there to help her carry a little of her burden.

But even though she works her hands to the bone she hardly earns enough to have a colorful life. She can’t afford a car or a carriage, which would make her work easier. She can’t even afford a good pair of shoes, so she has to walk through the rain on a pair of cheap slippers. She lives to work, and works to live. There is nothing else.

However, she is strong enough to walk through all the rain showers and strong headwinds life blows in her face. She keeps going, alone, patiently. And why?

How to Create a Bobblehead Portrait

In this tutorial I'll show you how you can create a funny bobblehead portrait. Since we're using the liquify tool you'll need a newer version of Photoshop.

The bobblehead images were used for a yearbook because the seniors wanted something special and it kinda fits their attitude--just nod all the time when the teacher is speaking...

This is the original shot:



1. Using the magnetic lasso tool (L), I selected the head and created a new layer via copy. Now we have a head layer and a body layer:



2. Using the move tool (V), I resized the background, so that the body shrinks. After that I used the crop tool (C) to cut the transparent background:



3. Now on the head layer we use the eraser tool (E) to erase parts of the neck and get a smooth transition to the body layer:



4. Should the neck be a little too big for the body you can fix it in warp mode. To do that, select the head layer, click on any transformation handle on the selection and then click on the warp mode icon in the top right-hand corner:



In order to fix the neck now you have to grab the handles at the bottom corners of the head layer and drag them toward the center, as indicated in the image above.

5. After that it's time to give the guy the comic-slim body. Select the body layer and open the liquify tool (Filter -> Liquify -> Forward Warp Tool). Depending on the image size you have to change the brush size so that the brush diameter is about the size of the body. Then you can squeeze the body the way you like. Practice makes perfect, and if you made a mistake you can always click on "reconstruct" or "revert all".

After the warping my image looks now like this:



All you have to do now is crop the image one more time to get rid of the white space.

Here's the final image as it appeared in the yearbook:

Open Your Eyes: A Child's Imagination

This picture was taken in a slum area in downtown Bangkok. A dog and a cat are strolling around, looking for food in the piles of trash. With temperatures at around 34°C the smell of warm rain water is in the air. Between dirty shacks two children are talking to each other on their mobile phones made of a piece of plastic they found somewhere around their home.

However, for a short moment the children are not poor. For a short moment, they are rich people, having fun on the phone. For a short moment, the girl even forgets that she has a broken arm. For a short moment, they are happy.

In a child’s imagination, everything is possible; children are always able to imagine a better world in their play, no matter how bad the circumstances are they find themselves in. A child’s imagination is powerful. However, somehow we lose this ability when we grow up.