Here's Johnny

[theantiquetiger]

I just want to bump this thread to maybe help Ernst from making an unintentional mistake. I actually called you today (got your number off the Internet) to see if you read what I wrote. It went straight to voicemail, but I didn't leave a message.

To be honest, if I didn't know this was a senior picture, I would have said this was a portrait of a fallen soldier, police officer, fireman, etc

[edG]

really like the composition Ernst, post seems a little soft/ethereal

interesting factoid theantiquetiger

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

Thanks everyone for the comments.

antiquetiger, Thanks for your concern, no disrepect intented. I'm just playing around with textures and sandwiching images, if someone takes offense I'm terrible sorry. As an artist am I not allowed creative freedom for the images that I might come up with?

Marco, No Johnny had no idea as to what I was going to produce with his portrait, matter of fact I didn't either.

[theantiquetiger]

I didn't mean I was offended or anything, I just meant his family may take offense to it or be superstitious. I understand creative freedom as an artist, but I wasn't sure if you knew about the rules of displaying the flag.

I remember a tv show (forget which), were a American guy was getting engaged to a Chinese girl. Her parents were coming to the states to meet their future son in law. He wanted to get them a gift, so he found an old picture of them and had it framed with white matting. They took offense to it because white is the color of mourning in China and they usually frame the picture of the deceased in white.

Your photograph reminded me of that episode.

By no means did I mean to offend your art, I just didn't know if you knew the meaning of the flag hanging the way it is hanging in your image.

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

You know what, I never gave it a second thought.

[Marko]

Thanks Ernst - It's a very powerful image. Since AT mentioned it, my instinct as well was that this looks like an image of a fallen soldier.

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

My thoughts were that Johnny was just All American.

Interesting, I just went back to the orignal image of the flag. This is a 49 Star Flag that a friends father gave to his son. It is framed and hanging above their mantle in their living room, with, displayed with the field of stars on the right side. Maybe the other side was soled more that this side. It's a great flag, one that I was proud to see and photograph.

[theantiquetiger]

This is a common mistake that many people make when display the flag horizontally. People think you just turn it 90 deg and hang it, but you actually have to flip it as well.

I didn't realize it was a 49star flag. That is VERY rare, only used for one year.

Since it is a 49 star flag, it is decommissioned, so not an official US flag anymore. Because of this, you can hang it or display it anyway you want, including in the image that you have here. If Johnny likes it, you may want to tell him about the union to the right in death, but it is OK for the flag to be displayed like this (just in case some one ask him).

Does this make sense?