The third image in my digital series entitled "Rivals Befriended."

Rivals Befriended by Russell Anderson ©2005
In a world bloated with competition, the emergence of rivalries is inevitable. One type of rivalry many people associate with occurs between sports teams. Often intense and rich in history, the competition between teams transcends into passionate rivalries among fans. On occasion rival sports fans manage to overcome their differences by acknowledging shared similarities.

In this work I chose to reveal the unification of feuding fans in hopes of creating a compassionate view of mankind in which our differences can be outweighed by similarities, rather than the destructive belief that we are strikingly different from our rivals. This concept is relevant to the world’s ever-growing problems that deal with the judgment of others based upon innumerable personal differences and values. Images of befriended rival sports fans are powerful metaphorical insights to treating each other with universal respect, and provide thoughtful models for beneficial behavior within humanity.

After intial conceptual brainstorming, I searched the Internet for pictures of couples and the types of scenes I imagined they would be united within. Next I enlarged, cropped, and combined the pictures to begin the rendering process. Using multiple layers in Photoshop, I strove for a photo-realistic aesthetic while experimenting with methods of representing forms within the photographs. Despite slight variations in the execution of rendering these images, they are seen as cohesively linked through style and the concept of rivals befriended.