CHEM WARFARE TRAINING DOUBLE TRUCK #2

This is the second of what was supposed to be a series of four double trucks I was to do for the Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI).

In this double truck I highlighted Self Aid and Buddy Care. This is the training we receive to take care of fallen military members if they get shot or are affected by Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons (NBC).

This photo was shot by Tech. Sgt. Don Perrien during a base Major Accident Response Exercise (MARE).

It features two airmen, I am not sure of their name, administering Self Aid and Buddy Care.

The photo was originally shot in front of a tent, outdoors, with a fairly shallow foreground of some pretty tore up grass. Additionally, the legs of the guy lying down were cut off just below the knee by the photo edge.

I used PhotoShop to extract these two airmen from the tent. I left the foreground intact and also added more foreground with the cloning tool.

To solve the problem of the no legs on the "patient" I laid down in front of a white filing cabinet in my office and shot a picture of my own legs with a digital camera. I used the computer to paste my legs onto the guys body and that is why he has a full set of legs here.

The background source photo was also shot by Sgt. Perrien. It was a cloud of smoke from an explosion by Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD). I scanned in that cloud of smoke off the photo, duplicated it several times, enlarged it in certain cases, reversed it in others, and layered it many times over the entire image. This is what gave it the effect of having lots of smoke, and also some depth.

For this image, I received an award from Air Mobility Command. First Place, Information Graphic. Actually, there was no category for what I had done here. An information graphic is what you would call those small bar graphs or pie charts that USA Today does at the bottom left of their paper. This was something else entirely. This project was the one of the most fun I had the luxury of doing while stationed at Dover AFB.

I have a laser engraved Lucite tombstone on the windowsill of my workplace now, commemorating this achievement. CTLOPEZ (Publication date, April 2, 1999)