Photograph of dirty sock no longer contains sock

Thursday, March 11, 2010

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The severely altered, formerly sock-themed photograph in question.

Photograph of dirty sock no longer contains sock

by John Johnson, staff reporter

DES MOINES, IA -- What started out as a photograph of a long-unlaundered gym sock lying on an apartment floor has been so thoroughly altered by Josh Marshall, 25, of Des Moines, that it is no longer recognizable as a photograph of a sock. Using the popular Adobe Photoshop software, Marshall spent hours Friday night adding several other, unrelated objects into the picture, eventually opting to remove the soiled sock altogether.

“I was just messing around with my digital camera one night, and I happened to snap a photo of one of my old, dirty socks lying on the kitchen floor next to a rather large crumb,” Marshall said while describing his licentious photography spree. “To make a long story short, when I uploaded the photo to my PC and looked at it, I thought, what kind of a boring-ass picture is this? So I decided to change it around a bit.”

After firing up Photoshop, Marshall got right to work. "The crumb was the first thing to go,” he said. “ It was just plain unsightly. I’m not even sure what kind of crumb it was. A cookie crumb, maybe, or a Pepperoni and Cheese Hot Pocket. But really, that’s not important. Anyways, I thought the picture would be much more exciting if I Photoshopped myself into it. You know? Like, me, standing there next to the sock,” Marshall declared proudly.

“Then I just got carried away,“ he admitted. ”I Photoshopped in a few cars and some trees, after which I thought, why stop there? I might as well go ahead and throw in the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But then the sock looked so out of place on the streets of Paris that I just went ahead and blew the sock away.”

“If you look closely, you can tell that’s me crossing the street on the Champs-Elysees.” Grinning roguishly, he went on: “I’m gonna show this picture to [childhood friend] Kelly [Meyers] to trick her into thinking I was in Paris.”

Upon hearing of Marshall’s exploits, Meyers said, “Josh means well, but he’s got too much time on his hands. In fact, I’ll bet he’s planning to show the picture to all his friends to try and convince us he was in Paris. It’s just like that one time when he stuck his head in his fish tank, took a picture, and tried to tell us he went scuba diving. Pathetic. But this kind of thing is vintage Josh Marshall.”

© 2008 The Teaspoon Times

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