735761258399315.jpg For his latest project, British art director Adam Richardson used Photoshop to superimpose Space Invader characters onto pics he took in Afghanistan and Iraq. Adam Richardson main page via NotCot

  • AJ

    At first I thought, OK, funny but takes the serious nature of death and invasion out of afghanistan, but hey he went there and took the photos..

    But then I noticed at the bottom it says all photos coutesy of the boston.com big picture… so they’re not even his photos..

    whats even worse they’re not the bostons photos either, they’re just an aggregator…

    so the artists here couldn’t even be bothered to track down the actual photographer and give him props..

    I think I’ll do it for him…
    1.U.S. Marines from the 2nd MEB, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines taken by David Guttenfelder/AP Photo (by the way the wall is there..)
    2.John Moore/Getty Images
    3.Bela Szandelszky/AP Photo
    4.A U.S Marine missile from the 2nd MEB strikes a Taliban position inside a mud walled compound near Now Zad taken by David Guttenfelder/AP Photo
    5.Canadian soldier Pte Chris Kezar from November Company 7th platoon taken by Stefano Rellandini/REUTERS
    6.A German soldier mans a checkpoint in Balkh, Afghanistan on October 15, 2009 taken by MICHAEL KAPPELER/Getty Images

    I’m all up for the copyfight but taking images and rehashing them without giving props to the brave photograhers who probably risked their lives to take them sucks a bit huh ?

  • Anonymous

    Hi, this is Adam, the creator of the images. When I uploaded the images I thought a few people, maybe a couple of hundred would see them. For this reason and half out of being lazy I didn’t credit each photographer and just the source.

    Cheers to the guy above for writing my credits for me, I really couldn’t be bothered to trawl through them and you obviously have more time in your life than I do so I just copied them from above. Thanks again, they are now updated at http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Invaded-Space/348954

    Cheers for the comments guys.

    P.S. The lens flare thing did my head in as well but this image needed another layer for the depth of the invaders, it did jar with me that it looked a little ‘photoshop filter’ but like I said, i wasn’t expecting the 10,000 hits I’ve had this week.

  • Anonymous

    Wow. I find this all kinds of dumb. Maybe it’s good art then, since art is often confronting. I can’t help but think it’s trivializing the experience of the troops on the ground there though, who face the threat of death every single hour of the day.

  • Keneke

    For my next project, I will photoshop kittens into still lifes of fruit baskets. It represents the voracity of today’s consumer culture.

  • arkizzle / Moderator
  • Anonymous

    What? No “Battle Zone”, “Berzerker” or “Defender” images? Way to phone it in, buddy.

  • Boba Fett Diop

    “Oh, there goes G in his UFO again…big help he is”

    “Did you know he has his own mini-fridge in there?”

    “Whaaat? What a dick!”

  • kc0bbq

    I’ll never understand the obsession with adding lens flares to everything. It makes it look worse than amateur.

    But you know what would be cool? A font with lens flares on every letter. Really obnoxious ones. You could make a killing licensing it to the lens flare addicts. You could follow it up year after year with Lens Flare II (two lens flares per character), Lens Flare III, ad nauseam.

  • gabrielm

    I dig the concept – so I hate to be a critic, but….

    That is some really horrible fake lens flare. It just looks bad. Plus check out the position of the soldier’s shadows.

  • Anonymous

    Drop down! Increase speed! Reverse direction!

  • Benoa

    Made me remember I had fun with photoshop last year and created it one suff kinda llike this too : http://www.flickr.com/photos/benoa/2387603229/ :)

  • Blackwhitezebra

    Yes! I remember that fantastic lens flare in Space Invaders. It was pretty intense.

  • Daneman

    Am I wrong, or is the “wall” photoshopped in as well?

    At gabrielm- I agree. There is something just plain wrong about the light source. Do you think that the soldiers were composited in?

    • dculberson

      Nah, the wall seems to be a part of the original photo. I think the setting just makes it jarring enough to seem fake. (That and the incredible contrast you get from shooting in a clear, sunny desert.)

  • EH

    gabrielm: it’s a comment on the artifice of modern war, philistine.

  • seyo

    Not even lame enough to be ironically awesome.

  • Itsumishi

    The lens flare is what makes the shadows look so wrong. The sun is actually pretty much directly above.

    The photo with just the bottom of the space invader taken from the bunker is quite good and well executed the rest not so much. Pity, because the concept is cool.