There's being good at Photoshop, and there's James Fridman. Most of us are technically gifted enough to touch our selfies up a little to make sure we're looking our best, but Fridman is so skilled that he should be working in Hollywood. He's a master manipulator of the photographic image!
Because of his incredible skills, Fridman is often asked by people on social media to lend his talents to customizing their pictures for them. Because he's a nice guy, he's always happy to oblige. Unfortunately for the people seeking his assistance, though, he doesn't always do exactly what they want.
As well as being gifted with Photoshop, Fridman has a fantastic sense of humor. He turns normal photographs into hilarious works of art. Even the people who didn't get what they asked for have to laugh at what he does with their images! Here are fifty of Fridman's greatest works.
We have no idea why this person's friend was pulling that terrified face on the original picture. It might just be a case of unfortunate timing, but there's no denying that she looks like she's running for her life. To spare her blushes, Fridman has been asked to put something in the background of the shot that would make sense for her to run away from. He's done that, but probably not with the kind of terrifying creatures the sender had in mind.
The Teletubbies have been adored by two generations of children, and they're not frightening at all when they're in their own colorful land on their TV show. If you take them out of that land and place them on an everyday street, they're suddenly not so cute. Nothing has changed about their appearance, but instead of being cuddly, friendly giants, they're horrifying alien creatures who probably want to eat you. We'd run away from that, too!
Never let it be said that Fridman won't go out of his way to keep his fans happy. When this woman decided that she wasn't a fan of the graffiti on the stone wall behind her carefully posed picture, she knew exactly what she had to do. Fridman is the best man to tidy up a wall for her, and so she was straight on the internet to send her request to him. He didn't keep her waiting long.
Instead of using Photoshop to do the cleaning, though, Fridman has magically jumped into the frame with his cleaning equipment, and is giving the wall some thorough care and attention. We're sure he'll have that paint gone in no time. We can only assume the woman was happy with this - after all, now she has a picture with a celebrity.
We don't think there was much wrong with this picture in the first place. It's a nice shot of two people having a great time out on the water. They're happy and smiling. They wanted Fridman to make it look like they were in danger, but if he'd put a couple of sharks in there, it wouldn't have fit their mood. Who would look that happy about being surrounded by dangerous creatures?
As many people who write to Fridman have now found out, you have to be very careful about how you phrase your requests. 'Dangerous waters' could mean anything. They didn't want him to put them in a simmering pot of pasta, but it's water, and it's definitely dangerous! Plus, the smiles make more sense now. If you somehow found yourself in a situation as absurd as that, laughing about it is probably all you could do.
Many of the request you'll see on this list stem from vanity. People often want Fridman to remove someone or something from a picture because they think it's ugly or undesirable for aesthetic reasons. On this occasion, we understand why you might want the picture altering. Although we're sure that's not really what's happening, it really does look like that man has decided to go to the toilet, and those poor children are in the way.
Using an ingenious solution, Fridman has saved the children. We still have the issue of the man looking like he's decided to relieve himself, but at least he's now doing it in the proper place. He could at least have had the decency to close the door, though. Perhaps a better solution for everybody would just have been to crop the picture, and take him out of the equation completely.
If you put yourself in a strange pose for a picture, you should be prepared to deal with the consequences. This woman fancies herself as a model, and has struck what she thinks is her best model pose for the camera. She isn't happy with the end results. We don't think it's much of an issue, but she wishes her leg was longer. Fridman can handle that problem for her easily, but she might have wanted to be more specific.
If you're going to ask someone to make your leg longer, you should also tell them how long you'd like that leg to be. Without this crucial bit of detail, Fridman was left to take his best guess. That ended up with her leg being so long that it can wrap around her own neck. She's also got two knees now instead of one, so she's up on the deal.
We're not sure why this is an obsession for people, but it is. There's an increasing trend for everybody to appear the same height in pictures. It doesn't make any sense, and it's not how things work in real life. We suppose it might possibly matter more to children than it should to adults, because being much shorter than someone your own age also makes you look younger. Nobody wants to look like the little kid.
These two best friends wanted to look the same height, and now they do. All Fridman had to do was completely remove the torso of the taller girl, and then re-attach her arm to the side of her head. It would seem that he isn't just a wizard with Photoshop; he's also not bad when it comes to extreme surgery. Most importantly, though, they're now the same height. Request fulfilled.
This photo is every parent's worst nightmare. You try to go for a nice family holiday, but you just can't persuade the children to strike a nice, happy pose together. When they're infants, one of them is usually crying or trying to run off in the opposite direction. By the time they're teenagers, you have the very first world problem of one of them refusing to take two seconds away from their phone to look at the camera.
If Fridman had been asked to make it look like this girl's brother was looking at the camera, he might have given it a try. That's not what was asked of him, though. She wanted him to look like he's having fun, and now he's had his head turned by a beautiful girl passing through the scene. He's not having fun with his sister, but he's having a better time than he was checking his messages!
We can't help but feel a little sorry for this young man. We don't know who took the picture, or why, but he's all alone in the world. He looks a little sad about it, and he's probably wondering where his friends are. By asking James to enhance his social life, he thought he might get a cool image which shows him being the life and soul of the party.
Sadly for him, the life and soul of the party upped sticks and left town a long time ago. Go to any social gathering now, and you'll find more people staring at their smartphone screens than you will interacting with each other. He's been given the standard 21st-century social life, but he doesn't look any more pleased about it. Maybe it's because he doesn't have his own phone?
Trying to be too cool all the time will only ever end in tears. It's bad enough that this guy is trying to look like a rough, mean dude in the picture. He then makes it worse by admitting to Fridman that he's lied to his friends about owning one of the most expensive luxury cars in the world, and his only hope of pulling off the lie is providing photographic evidence. He was so nervous about asking, though, that he managed to spell 'put' as 'pet.'
Fridman must be an animal lover, because he was only too happy to do some petting. In order for that to happen, this wannabe gangster had to turn into something that he might want to pet. Now he's a dog, and he's getting a pat for being a good boy. He did get his Bugatti though, so we're sure that showing this picture to his friends will put an end to any suggestions that he's been economical with the truth.
When a relationship ends badly, it's only natural that we want to remove as many traces of our ex-partner from our life as possible. We delete their number from our phone, we throw out any possessions that remind us of them, and we'll either throw away or delete any pictures of them and us together. This girl must have been particularly attached to this photo, though. She still wants it; she just doesn't want him to be in it.
How she expected Fridman to be able to remove him without it looking obvious is anyone's guess, but he's managed to totally eliminate the boy without leaving any trace. She crucially forgot to tell him that she also wanted his clothes removed, though, so they stuck around. It may not be what she wanted, but at least now she can tell her friends she once went on vacation with the invisible man.
This is a weird one. When we go to see animals in a zoo, we don't generally expect them to look as happy to see us as we are to see them. They're captive, for a start, and even if they don't mind being captive, animals don't express joy in the same way we do. Whoever took the picture has decided that they want this monkey to look as happy about being in the shot as she does. Fridman saw the issue straight away; the monkey is stood in a pool of freezing cold water. Who'd be happy about that?
In fixing the problem, Fridman has employed a little role reversal. The monkey is now safe and dry out of the water, and has every reason to look pleased about the situation. The unfortunate girl, though, has taken its place. Now she's wet, and she's finding out why the monkey was never smiling in the first place. Also, that monkey has quite the selfie game going on.
Most of the time, we find ourselves supporting Fridman's photographic amendments. We think he's been a little rude this time, though. All this poor woman wanted was him to move her kite to a position of glorious elevation. It's always been her dream to fly a kite properly, and she can't make it happen. All he had to do was move one small kite a little further into the air, and everything would have been fine. He had to take it a step further, though!
Now the kite is flying - because the woman herself is flying. She's taking a daredevil trip, hanging on a bungee cord from a helicopter which looks dangerously close to the ground. We suppose that's one way to get it flying if you can't do it through conventional means. Fridman did at least prove that he's safety-conscious - he's given her a little green crash helmet.
Some people just get too fussy with photos. This is a casual selfie, taken by a boyfriend and girlfriend on a day out somewhere. They're happy, they have corn dogs, and everything seems right with the world. Apparently, that's not good enough though; to make this picture-perfect, the boyfriend needs to have a full corn dog so they're matching! Given that he'd eaten his, Photoshop was the only solution.
Fridman has succeeded in giving him his full corn dog back, but sadly he had no frame of reference for the original size. All he could do is use hers as a reference point, and because hers was so much closer to the camera, it came out a little large. Now we have a whole corn dog, but we can't see his face. Given that she seemed more concerned about the food than anything else, she's probably happy with it.
If you make a very vague request, you're likely to get a vague answer. There's some kind of formal occasion going on in this picture. We have a couple dressed up to the nines, drinks in hand, out for a celebration. Perhaps it's a wedding, or a prom. Either way, it was an important occasion for them, and they didn't want their photo ruined by someone having the audacity to walk down the path in the background.
The suggestion that Fridman should 'do something' with the lady in red was wide open to interpretation. With this Photoshop genius, that's only going to end one way. He did something with her by putting her front and center in the picture. We think the girl who made the request may have wanted to have the intruder removed from the frame, but now it's like she's part of the family.
This photo looks a little bit like Fridman had been at work on it before any request was sent to him! It's a happy scene, with a group of friends getting together to celebrate good times. The boy in the orange shirt looks a little uncomfortable, though. Because of a combination of the angle of his arm, and the angle of the camera, it looks like his head has slipped clean off his shoulders and rolled down the arm. At least he's smiling through the pain.
Fridman's job was simple - attach the head and the body back together. There was no direction about which part of the body the head should be attached to, so Fridman went with the nearest available limb. We think there's a lot to be said for this arrangement. Imagine how much easier it would be to look around corners, or on high shelves!
The question of which of the two gentlemen in the first picture was really in 'an awkward pose' is key to what Fridman's done here. Although the man standing up seems to think that his friend is lowering the tone, his friend looks pretty chilled out to us. He's just lying on his back, minding his own business. What's awkward about that? If he had a problem with him, he could have asked him to move instead of asking Fridman to humiliate him on the internet!
The request backfired. The scene has now moved on to a bedroom, where it looks like there's a little romance happening. Our coffee cup holding friend is playing third wheel, and the look on the girl's face suggests that she'd like him to leave. Now, one of them is definitely looking awkward - and it definitely isn't the man in bed.
Some people are good with posing for photographs, and some people aren't. If you aren't, you'll know the pain of having friends, partners, and relatives constantly trying to snap pictures with you. According to the man in the photo, this woman is his wife, and she 'always does this' when they're trying to get a picture together. By 'this,' he means that she always has her eyes closed as the crucial moment.
Fridman might have been able to solve the problem, but as a forward thinker, he knew it wouldn't do them any good. He might be able to fix this one image, but what about all the pictures they're going to take together in the future? If she wore novelty glasses with eyeballs printed on them, everything would always be fine. He's even put some on her here, so they can see how good she'd look.
In another classic case of people being too sensitive about what they look like in pictures, the girl in the beige dress toward the front of this picture thinks that she's done something strange with her hand. She has sort-of made a fist, but if she hadn't mentioned it, we wouldn't have noticed. We don't think anyone else would either. Nevertheless, she wants Fridman to make it look like she's holding something, and therefore the fist would make sense.
By saying he should 'add something' in her hand, she was leaving herself open for literally anything. We're guessing that Fridman was thinking about his next skiing holiday when he was editing this picture, because she's got a great climbing stick there now. She's also dressed appropriately for the hobby. She should probably have just asked him to add a purse.
What was this girl hoping to achieve with this? She's not even in the picture, and yet she wants to make amendments to it that insult both of the parties involved! It's a lovely picture of a mother and her son, but she'd like her brother removed, and her mom paired up with a handsome man. Is she implying that her mom is incapable of getting a handsome man of her own? How rude!
Fridman has treated this request with all the respect it deserved. The man whose head has been placed on her little brother's shoulders is handsome by anyone's definition, but he's left the height unchanged. Maybe her mom was looking for a toy boy. If she was, she's now been given her own action man doll. They'd certainly turn people's heads if they walked down the street together.
Everybody wants to get up close and personal with their favorite movie stars, even if they're animated characters instead of real people. We don't know how much further this man thought he could go than he'd got already, though. He wants to look like he's in the movie 'Frozen,' and yet he's already stood next to Olaf, standing on a mock-up from a scene in the movie. Did he want a speaking part, or a cameo role?
Fridman must have been similarly stumped. With nowhere else left to turn, he decided to dress him up as Elsa, with a hairstyle to boot. May we say he looks fabulous in that dress? He was born to play the role, and he should get on the phone to Disney immediately. Now he's got his ideal photo, perhaps he can finally let it go.
When we're little children at school, none of us grow up wanting to work in an office. We all want to be firefighters, or actors, or movie stars. Some of the really ambitious kids want to go a step further, and become astronauts. Almost everybody has to give these dreams up as they get older, but this girl didn't want to. She still wants to be an astronaut, and she wants Fridman to put her into space.
She didn't really pick the best of pictures to support her cause. She'd never be allowed into a space rocket in that outfit, and the pose doesn't scream 'moonwalk' to us either. Because she wasn't suited to outer space, Fridman looked down at his keyboard for inspiration and found another kind of 'space' to put her in. We don't believe this model of keyboard is available from the Logitech store.
In yet another entry in the 'being descriptive is important' file, here we have a picture of two guys. One of them is grinning at the camera, and the other is looking mean and moody in the background. We know from the request that one of them has photobombed the other, but which way round did it happen?
For all Fridman knows, the guy in the background was trying to have an atmospheric photo of himself taken gazing enigmatically into the middle distance, and then some joker came and jumped right in front of the lens. That's the version of events he must have decided on, because now all we have is Mr. Distant in the background. As a side note, how on Earth did Fridman manage to construct an entire face and neck for him out of the limited information he had? This man is truly a magician!
Whoever sent this request in is obviously very familiar with what Fridman does. He knows that the genius will find a way to twist any request he makes, so he's just left things open to his judgment. What we have as a result is a photo of a group of men, and an invitation to do anything with it that Fridman wishes to do. Rather than go crazy, Fridman has taken the subtle approach.
This might be the most fiendishly difficult 'spot the difference' competition we've ever encountered. There are allegedly thirteen differences between the image on the left, and the image on the right. We spotted a few of them, but we got stuck very quickly. As a starting point, look at their feet and their hands, which will get you a couple of them. Are there really thirteen to find, or are we being trolled? How many can you see?
We might be witnessing a cry for help here. The man who sent this photo in has been photographed at a low point. He's lost his shirt, he's crashed out on the sofa, and one of his friends thinks that this would be a good time to take a picture of him. Who needs enemies with friends like that? After seeing the picture, he's realized that he's a little out of shape, and he's asked Fridman to make him look like he pumps iron.
Fridman isn't here to let you take shortcuts. If you want the perfect body, you have to work for it. That means getting up off the sofa, getting to the gym, and putting that work in. As a means of inspiration, our sleeping beauty has been transported to a gym, so he can get an idea of what one looks like from the inside when he wakes up.
If a woman sent a message to Fridman asking him to give them bigger breasts, we'd feel a little sad that they were unhappy with their appearance, but we'd understand. When a man does it - and talks about a girl in such a disrespectful manner - he gets no such understanding. To make things worse, from the pose we suspect they're boyfriend and girlfriend. Why does she put up with him?
Fridman has given him the benefit of the doubt. Surely nobody would be so rude as to describe their own girlfriend in such terms, so he must have been talking about himself. Now, he has an enormous pair of breasts. This is what it means to truly make a boob out of yourself on the internet. At least he can ogle himself in the picture now instead of worrying about what she looks like.
If we're going to call out men for asking for changes to female bodies, we should also call out women for asking for changes to their men. Why does this girl think her husband needs to be shaved? He looks very happy with that beard, and he's rocking the look. Many men who have beards have had them for many years; he might not even remember what he looks like without it anymore! Plus, she married him, so she should have learned to accept him as he is by now.
Presumably, she'd prefer her man if he looked a little more baby-faced, so Fridman has granted her wish. Now he has the softest, cutest cheeks you could ever hope to see. She doesn't have to worry about him needing to shave those cheeks for at least another fifteen years! She might have to explain to people why she's married to a giant baby, though.
Have you ever been told by a complete stranger to 'cheer up,' just because you didn't look radiantly happy at the precise second they caught your eye? This guy has the opposite problem. He's got a smile on his face, but because he identifies as an 'emo,' it doesn't suit his look. He wants the world to know he's got a cold, dark, soul, and he can't do that if he can't manage to frown when someone points a camera at him.
From Fridman's response, we now know that if he were an actor, he would definitely take the 'method' route. It's outside Fridman's comprehension that someone could just 'be' sad; they need a reason. Based on this boy's age, he might be heading off to college soon. Those tuition fees will give him something to cry about. His eyes are still full of cheer, though. He's smiling inside!
Ah, those days at school, when two female best friends would fall out over a boy, swear never to speak to each other again, and then go back to being best friends a week later. We miss them so much. Here, we have two friends happily posing for a picture even though they're at war over a boy. The girl in the pink shoes has an evil plan; get Fridman to 'ugly up' her friend on the photo, and send it to the boy. She's surely bound to win his affection then.
If she worried about her English classes as much as she worried about boys, she'd have been able to spell 'great' correctly. As she didn't, she accidentally asked him to look like a grate instead. Fridman has excelled himself here, and done precisely what was asked of him. We suspect the boy in question never received this picture, although he may have seen it on the internet since.
Not everything sent to Fridman meets with disdain or mockery. He's shown on several occasions that he has a heart of gold underneath his sarcastic internet persona. This was one such occasion. The girl in the question suffers from vitiligo, which results in pale white patches appearing on the skin. As the condition is so visible, many people who have it feel embarrassed about their appearance. She thought it made her look ugly, and so she wanted to know if she'd look prettier if she were 'normal.'
Rather than do anything with the photo, Fridman told her exactly what she needed to hear. Having a skin condition doesn't make her unattractive, and if she carries herself with confidence, it needn't be an issue or a hindrance in her life. He could have taken the opportunity to airbrush her, but instead, he chose to be kind. Mr. Fridman, we salute you.
Fridman acting like a friendly uncle to girls who have appearance insecurities isn't a one-off; he's been known to do it whenever he gets a request from someone who seems insecure. There's absolutely nothing wrong with having freckles - hundreds of millions of people have them - but they're the sort of thing you can get teased about at school. We imagine that's what must have happened to make a girl this young go looking to Fridman for help.
Again, Fridman decided to put Photoshop down, and give her some real talk. As he says, she'd look less unique without her freckles, and so she should accept them as a part of her. Mockery doesn't get to us if we're confident about who we are, so hopefully, this little confidence boost allowed her to look at her freckles in a new light.
At first glance, this looks like a rare instance of Fridman just doing what's been asked of him, and not taking the chance to make a joke. On the left, we have a man who's missing a tooth. The man on his right is his son-in-law, and like a good son-in-law, he wants to get him a present. To be more specific, he'd like to replace the missing tooth for him. How kind and thoughtful!
You have to look a little closer here to work out what Fridman's done, but when you see it, it's brilliant. Although the son-in-law's mouth is almost closed, you can just about see that Fridman has taken a tooth from his mouth. That must be the one he used to plug the gap! A family that shares are a family that cares, after all.
Everybody, this is Jim. Everybody knows a Jim. He's the one who's guaranteed to get drunk at Christmas and embarrass himself. He's also the one who'll party a little too hard at a wedding, and ruin the night for everybody else. In this picture, he's busy lowering the tone in what we're told is a great wedding photograph. There doesn't seem to be anything special about the picture to us - without Jim, it would actually look a little boring - but who are we to say?
Making Jim look 'more formal' as requested was never going to be easy, given the awkward pose he's in. Instead, Fridman has found a new role in life for him - now he's making the wedding video! With his expensive-looking camera and his boom mike, it looks like Jim's taking things seriously for once, and doing a great job. Is that formal enough for you?
Getting a group picture is never easy. It requires everyone to take the matter seriously, and all look in the same direction at the same time. It sounds simple on paper, but anyone who's ever tried to take one knows that nine times of ten, someone moves, pulls a silly face, or generally spoils the mood. The guy in the green t-shirt has had enough of this practice. The face of the boy in the white cap is unsettling him, and he wants something done about it.
Fridman didn't think that giving white cap boy a new face was the right way to go about things, so instead, he decided to correct the mood of the photo by giving the boys either side of him the same face instead. Now, the mood is consistent right along the line - until we get to the guy in the green. Suddenly, it's him who's ruining the tone of the shot.
There are more makeup tutorials on YouTube that anyone will ever need. People can do such elaborate things with makeup that they look like someone completely different when they apply a full face of it. If you're not happy with how you've applied your makeup, just wash it off, go back to YouTube, and follow another tutorial. You'll soon get the hang of it. Asking someone else to touch it up for you digitally is just lazy!
We don't know whether Fridman knows much about makeup, but we're pretty sure that this isn't the type of 'highlight' that the girl had in mind. She also now probably regrets leaving her hand in that position. She already looked kind of bored from her pose - now she looks like she was so bored that she picked up a highlighter pen and drew all over her own face.
If you want to get a photo edited by Fridman (and he's still there on Twitter, taking requests, so you can), the best way to go about it is to ask him to do something. That's part of the fun, and that's where most of the humor comes from. If you just tell him to do anything he pleases, it's less fun for him. It also suggests you have a lack of imagination. Don't do it!
He made an exception for this guy, though, and that's probably because of all his elaborate headgear. This, very clearly, is a man who likes to party. Fridman was so impressed with his commitment to partying that he decided to put him forward as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America. Given this third-way option, we wonder if the end result would have looked any different?
We don't think the two people in this picture are really fighting. We think they're just two friends who've decided to pick up some sticks and mock-up a photo. We can't deny that it makes for a pretty epic shot though - although apparently not epic enough for one of the people who's in it. They wanted Fridman to make this a battle scene for the ages. We don't know what they had in mind; and nor, it seems, does he.
In the times of our ancestors, a battle on the beach would involve broadswords. If it were science fiction, it would be a lightsaber. As it's the 21st century, the most likely stick-sized weapon that anyone would have to hand is a selfie-stick. Of course, once people have selfie-sticks in hand, they lose interest in fighting and just start taking pictures of their own faces instead. Peace has broken out here, at the point of a camera!
The sense of entitlement that some people have is incredible. Fridman doesn't charge anyone for his services, and he provides us with laughs for free on his Twitter account. He's basically doing us all a favor. Some people must feel like he owes them something though, because they send him messages like this. There's nothing polite in the message - just an instruction to 'remove the car, OK?'
This man obviously thinks a lot of himself - anybody who has photos of themselves taken next to a tree with their shirt open must do - so he probably talks down to people every day. As he decided to take a dump in Fridman's inbox, Fridman responded by taking a dump on his request. The car has been expertly removed from the picture with all of Fridman's customary skill - but in its place is someone going to the toilet in the great outdoors.
The language that young people use is a little confusing to anybody who's over 30. Only a few short years ago, to be 'woken' just meant to be roused from a state of slumber. Now, someone who is 'woke' considers themselves to be more aware of the 'true' nature of the world than the average person. They'll have a favorite list of conspiracy theories, and they won't be shy about giving you all the details of them if they ever meet you in person.
The boy in this picture looks like he's had a big day. He's half-asleep, and it probably wasn't the best time for someone to take a picture of him. He wants to be awake. Because Fridman is up to date with slang he's decided to wake him up a different way; he's introduced him to the Jesse Ventura show 'Conspiracy Theory.' Now his eyes are open wide - and they may never close again!
No matter where you live in the world, you've probably been hearing about Brexit for the past three years. If you live in Britain, it's a never-ending news story that's in every newspaper you look at and every television show you watch, every day of the year. For those who have somehow avoided it, 'Brexit' is the process of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, which was voted for in 2016 and is yet to happen in 2019.
The person who sent this request to Fridman obviously doesn't want the UK to leave, but Fridman knows better than to get involved in political debates. No matter what he did, half of the people in the deeply divided country would hate him for it. Instead, he's given us a picture of Boris Johnson desperately trying to learn how to use Photoshop, with former British Prime Minister David Cameron peering in at him through a window.
Photobombers are annoying. They have no care for why you might be taking a picture; they just want to get themselves involved in it! This woman - presumably from Montenegro - was on holiday in Budapest, and wanted to get a commemorative picture taken in front of a major landmark. Having the Budapest tour bus in the background was a bonus. Having this guy mugging for the camera wasn't.
She probably wanted Fridman to remove the man from her picture, but like so many others she asked him to 'do something' with him instead. Fridman was at least a little sympathetic to her cause, though, because now he's made him blend in seamlessly with the background with a little help from a nearby fire hydrant. Remove the man from the picture? What man? We see no man here! Hopefully, she saw the funny side.
As we talked about earlier, one of the recurring themes with Fridman's work is that he always treats people who feel insecure about their looks with kindness. The flip side of that behavior is that if he feels someone's request is motivated by vanity, he'll deal with them more sarcastically than he does with anybody else. In this photo, we have a man standing in the background minding his own business, but this good-looking girl thinks he's too ugly to share the picture with her.
As she's clearly convinced that she's beautiful and he isn't, Fridman knows just how to give him a makeover and meet her approval. He's dressed him up just like her, and even given him a pedestal to stand on so he can show off his shapely legs. Now, they could pass for twins! We bet she was thrilled when she saw the amended image.
Part of what makes Fridman's work so funny is that he takes everyday pictures and everyday requests, and he turns them into something surreal. Usually, he'll seize on a misspelling or a lack of specificity in the original request to create the surreal image, and that makes it all the funnier. Every once in a while, though, he'll get a request that's so weird that he can just take it at face value.
He regularly gets requests from people who want to remove ex-partners from photos, but asking for them to be replaced by a dinosaur was a new one on him. There was no misspelling or misunderstanding here - she just straight-up asked him to make it look like she was kissing a dinosaur. What else could he do but exactly what she suggested? And what a well-dressed dinosaur he is, too!
Have you ever tried to take a picture that makes it look like you're holding or touching something in the background? If so, why? Almost nobody gets it right, and so people come away from their vacations and breaks with photos that look like this one, where someone's been so far away from their target that they might as well not have bothered. All is not lost, though - with Fridman on hand; you always have the option of fixing your terrible camera work and ending up with the picture you set out to get!
The girl in the sunglasses here wanted it to look like she was holding the mountains in her hand, but her hand was too high, and the photographer seemingly didn't have the heart to tell her. Fridman had two options here; he could move the mountains into the sky, or he could drop her hand below the mountain. Option two was easier, and seeing as her request said, 'adjust this picture,' she can't say that he didn't follow her orders. She might want to see a doctor about that shoulder.
Sometime, a man and a woman will be having a conversation, and the man's eyes will be focused on the woman's chest instead of her eyes or mouth. It's rude, and it should be called out whenever it happens. If, however, you've gone to a hall of waxworks and the waxwork appears to be staring at your chest, that's on you. You put yourself in the pose, and you should have picked a better place to stand. It's not like poor Albert Einstein here had the option of moving himself.
As Einstein can't move, and this girl wants him to look her in the eye, there's only one thing for it. Her eyes are going to have to move, and if her eyes are moving, then so is her whole head. Now, they're eye to eye, and she's going to need to seek urgent attention from an expert chiropractor as soon as she's done taking the picture.
Standing on a bridge in the mountain wasn't dangerous enough for this tough guy. Nor was being right next to a sheer drop, or a glass floor which would allow you to see all the way down to the bottom. He didn't tell us how he wanted Fridman to go about it, but he wanted to look 'more dangerous.' For some reason, he also wasn't too keen on having the women running through the background in his 'dangerous' shot either.
Asking to be made to look like a physical threat is a bit of a tall order when you're wearing sandals, but Fridman has been able to turn a weakness into an advantage. Now, the sandals aren't just to confined to his feet; they're on every limb of his body. This is a man who can kick you five different ways! No wonder the women have vanished from the scene; as Fridman pointed out, they were terrified!
We never cease to be amazed by the faults that some people find in their pictures. This is actually a really good shot of two people just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. One of them is dressed for the beach and the other for the rodeo, but there's nothing wrong with that - except for our wannabe cowboy. Maybe there's a cowboy dress code which we're unaware of, because apparently his belt buckle is too small. The buckle must have a special meaning to him, so Fridman is here to help him out.
As showing off the belt buckle was apparently the true purpose of the picture, Fridman has decided to make it front and center. Now the two friends are holding it between them proudly, and letting the rest of us get a much better look at it. It looks like they've just won a tennis competition. This might not be a practical way of holding your trousers up, but we can't say it doesn't make the picture more memorable.
English isn't everyone's first language, and it can be a difficult language to learn. We would never mock anyone for trying to get their message across, but sometimes Google translate doesn't really do the job we want it to do. We know that this man wanted Fridman to do something with this chair, and by the phrase 'not aesthetic' we're guessing he wasn't happy with how it looked. 'Make it chair' doesn't make any sense at all, though. Make what chair?
With no other obvious candidates in view, Fridman decided that 'it' must be the gentleman himself. He doesn't like the look of his chair, and so he'd like to become a better-looking chair, so he can show all the other chairs how to do it. That has to be what he meant, right? He's right too; he looks kind of comfortable. We'd be happy to sit on him, were it not for the slightly off-putting fact that he's got his head under his arm.
Another request motivated by insecurity. This girl is all dressed up with somewhere to go, and she looks great, but she's caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and doesn't like it. It's really just a small detail of the photo, but she's decided that she simply can't bear to look at it anymore, and she wants Fridman's help to get rid of it.
Fridman's options were limited with this. He could remove her from the mirror, but that would make her look like a vampire with no reflection! He decided that he couldn't do that to her, and so he did away with the mirror completely. Now she's got a window instead, and an excellent view of the boiler room. Some people might see that as a downgrade, but we can tell you that urban chic is very in at the moment. If this apartment were in the middle of New York, people would be happy to pay big money for it!
If you've enjoyed what you've seen on this list and you're thinking of writing to Fridman yourself, could you do us a favor? Could you promise to be on-point with whatever you're asking of him, and not leave anything open to interpretation? If you don't, we could end up with another horrifying visual like this one. We're not sure we're going to sleep tonight now.
Not content with having her picture taken next to a tree, this woman wants to make it look like she's in the tree. It's likely that she meant somewhere up in the branches, but that's not what she said - she said in it, which Fridman has taken to mean 'inside it.' Now, like something from a horror movie, the tree seems to have absorbed her. The branches have even taken on the pose of her arms. We're not generally in favor of deforestation, but we'll make an exception for this.
If you have a picture of yourself looking fantastic in real life, why would you want to do something to do it that will make it fake? This is a great photo of this girl, but she thinks she'd look a lot better if she had wings. When we read that request, we thought that she was referring to angel wings. They would take away from the natural beauty of the picture, and the whole thing would look ridiculous.
Fortunately, we got it wrong. As Fridman identified, she must have been referring to the other kind of wings - and that's the kind of idea that we can get on board with! You'll never be short of friends if you're carrying a bucket of hot wings around with you, and she has plenty to share. Wings improved the picture after all!
