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missroseroseAnyone who's tried their hand at photography knows the dis-ingenuousness of the saying "the camera doesn't lie". The camera may record exactly what it sees, sure, but there are all sorts of ways to manipulate that - forced perspective, selective framing, you name it. Not to mention the temporal aspect; impressive yoga pictures like the one in my icon here are almost universally one snap out of a set, picked because it captured the exact moment the person's form was perfect, just before they wobbled out of center. So perhaps a more accurate saying would be "The camera only lies by omission."
None of this is meant {groan} negatively. Indeed, the whole point of photography consists of using light, framing, depth-of-field, and other tricks to make your subject visually interesting. That's what differentiates photography-for-documentation (such as what most people snap when they're on vacation) from photography-for-art.
But what of post-processing? Almost every art photographer (and, increasingly, documentarian photographer) uses at least minor tweaks for color balance, contrast, saturation, and the like. Thanks to the advent of digital photography and free programs like Picasa, it's becoming easier and easier to do more than minor tweaking - Brian's complained more than once that many folks on DeviantArt treat the selective-desaturation function as "Instant Art!". Once upon a time, such tricks required special equipment and a particular knowledge of technique; now it's as simple as pressing a button on your editing program.
And then there's the ever-controversial subject of photo retouching. It's not at all hard to find examples of before-and-after retouching jobs - mouse over and watch those breasts grow and those hips shrink, those pores and wrinkles disappear like magic. Retouching in magazines has been the subject of many an argument over their perpetration of unrealistic ideals of social norms (or, in some cases, outcry over their attempts to pass off cartoonishly exaggerated airbrush jobs as real photos), but it's becoming ever-more available in the public sphere as well. Anyone with the money to buy (or the know-how to download a pirated version of) Photoshop has been able to do some pretty powerful photo editing for some time now; but even free Picasa has a basic-but-surprisingly-functional retoucher.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this proliferation of ease-of-polish. It's useful and even fun to play with - I recently took a friend's profile photo (which she liked but was taken during a particularly bad-skin time) and took out most of the blemishes for her. She was appreciative, but the sheer ease of it left me with an odd feeling - a mixture of empowerment and self-disgust. Who was to say I shouldn't take out her wrinkles as well, and leave her looking 20 again? Or take out those extra pounds and leave her looking like a magazine cover model? Not that she's unattractive by any means (quite the reverse), but suddenly I could see why it is some retouchers go so completely overboard. In a way, it almost feels like a means of denigrating your subject - "You're not attractive enough as is, and I'm the one with the power to change that." Given the history in our culture of people (especially men) feeling threatened by attractive women, perhaps it's not surprising that Demi Moore ends up missing a hip now and then.
On the other hand, much like Brian's negative reaction to the sudden flood of selectively-desaturated photos being posted as "Art!", perhaps the increasing availability of retouching tools will inspire people to think about how an image was likely edited and changed before hitting the cover of Cosmopolitan. If almost everyone has experience taking out a blemish or giving themselves a tummy tuck, I'd imagine that most retouch jobs would start to look as ridiculously artificial as they actually are. Many a photographer has commented that they've had a famous model walk in and not even recognized her; I hope that as more people edit out the figure flaws they're most self-conscious about, they'll realize the process goes both ways.
None of this is meant {groan} negatively. Indeed, the whole point of photography consists of using light, framing, depth-of-field, and other tricks to make your subject visually interesting. That's what differentiates photography-for-documentation (such as what most people snap when they're on vacation) from photography-for-art.
But what of post-processing? Almost every art photographer (and, increasingly, documentarian photographer) uses at least minor tweaks for color balance, contrast, saturation, and the like. Thanks to the advent of digital photography and free programs like Picasa, it's becoming easier and easier to do more than minor tweaking - Brian's complained more than once that many folks on DeviantArt treat the selective-desaturation function as "Instant Art!". Once upon a time, such tricks required special equipment and a particular knowledge of technique; now it's as simple as pressing a button on your editing program.
And then there's the ever-controversial subject of photo retouching. It's not at all hard to find examples of before-and-after retouching jobs - mouse over and watch those breasts grow and those hips shrink, those pores and wrinkles disappear like magic. Retouching in magazines has been the subject of many an argument over their perpetration of unrealistic ideals of social norms (or, in some cases, outcry over their attempts to pass off cartoonishly exaggerated airbrush jobs as real photos), but it's becoming ever-more available in the public sphere as well. Anyone with the money to buy (or the know-how to download a pirated version of) Photoshop has been able to do some pretty powerful photo editing for some time now; but even free Picasa has a basic-but-surprisingly-functional retoucher.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this proliferation of ease-of-polish. It's useful and even fun to play with - I recently took a friend's profile photo (which she liked but was taken during a particularly bad-skin time) and took out most of the blemishes for her. She was appreciative, but the sheer ease of it left me with an odd feeling - a mixture of empowerment and self-disgust. Who was to say I shouldn't take out her wrinkles as well, and leave her looking 20 again? Or take out those extra pounds and leave her looking like a magazine cover model? Not that she's unattractive by any means (quite the reverse), but suddenly I could see why it is some retouchers go so completely overboard. In a way, it almost feels like a means of denigrating your subject - "You're not attractive enough as is, and I'm the one with the power to change that." Given the history in our culture of people (especially men) feeling threatened by attractive women, perhaps it's not surprising that Demi Moore ends up missing a hip now and then.
On the other hand, much like Brian's negative reaction to the sudden flood of selectively-desaturated photos being posted as "Art!", perhaps the increasing availability of retouching tools will inspire people to think about how an image was likely edited and changed before hitting the cover of Cosmopolitan. If almost everyone has experience taking out a blemish or giving themselves a tummy tuck, I'd imagine that most retouch jobs would start to look as ridiculously artificial as they actually are. Many a photographer has commented that they've had a famous model walk in and not even recognized her; I hope that as more people edit out the figure flaws they're most self-conscious about, they'll realize the process goes both ways.
