picture as

picture (one) as (something)

1. To imagine that one is or might be a certain type of person or thing. I always pictured you as a lawyer when you got older. I lived next to them my whole life—I can't picture them as killers!
2. To create an image in one's mind of one being or looking a certain way. I can't help but laugh picturing my brother the hippie as some straight-laced police officer. Growing up, whenever my mom talked about my cousin being in the Navy Seals, I always pictured him as a literal seal wearing a military uniform.
See also: picture
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

picture someone as someone or something

to imagine someone as someone or a type of person; to form a mental picture of someone as someone or a type of person. Just picture me as Santa Claus! I can't picture you as a doctor.
See also: picture
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • picture (one) as (something)
  • see as
  • see as (something)
  • don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs
  • grow up
  • older sister
  • older brother
  • feature in
  • put (oneself) in (someone's) place
  • put yourself in somebody's shoes/place
References in periodicals archive
Mitchell doesn't think this approach is wrong exactly, but the emphasis on the picture as something that requires interpretation--a visual "text" there to be read or decoded--tends to block our understanding of the ways that pictures are more than just structures of information or ideas.
Their so-called life: Norman Bryson on W. J. T. Mitchell
Starting with dry-fire and leading to live-fire exercises, the instructor can see the same visual picture as the student and physically manipulate the student's hands to demonstrate the proper sight picture, sight alignment, grip, trigger control, and acceptance of recoil.
Fast Track
Gilbert dismisses the veracity of the will, believing that Ciriaco's son, indifferent to art, perpetuated the misidentification of this picture as a St.
Gilbert calls the picture a "Pastor friso," citing Gaspare Celio's similar identification of the work before 1620.
Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals
It's fluid and, in the end, it's of necessity more involved with the picture as an object than it is with the subject.
The subject in question