What if I told you that Micheal Jordan never really made all of those incredible shots, or that Jerry Rice never actually caught all of those amazing throws from Joe Montana? Imagine if almost everything that you have seen in pictures and t.v. were...lies!
A month ago, I wrote about how the pictures and images of our favorite athletes and models that we see in magazines and even on television are distorted and manipulated through various methods, including water depletion, lighting, tanning and even drugs. However, there was one enormously important piece of the image-manipulation puzzle that I left out: photoshop. Here's an amazing demonstration that I found from diet.com that shows how every image that we see in magazines and advertisements can be instantly "improved" with nothing more than a left-click of your computer mouse:
Not only is this a fascinating expose into just how simple and commonplace image manipulation is in everything that we are shown through popular media, it gives us a glimpse into how easily it can be to become dissatisfied and discouraged with our own bodies and the hard work that goes into creating them when we aspire to look like an airbrushed and photoshopped lie.
Altering an image may not be as simple (or as silly) as drawing muscles on yourself with a magic marker (I really am a sucker for a woman with an accent), but the fact is that drawing cartoonish muscles on doctored photos is much more common than you might realize. If you don't recognize this fact every time you reach for the latest issue of your favorite fitness magazine, you'll find yourself in a never-ending cycle of frustration trying to accomplish a promise that was never based in truth.
But don't worry: I swear that none of the before-and-after pictures on my website have been doctored! That was all hard work and effort, not MacBook.
-Jonathan
Sunday, November 16, 2008
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4 comments:
Thanks for posting our video! :) Great article to go along with it as well.
Fantastic stuff, Jon. I wish more people really understood how rampant this is and realized that they are being force fed a completely unrealistic body image by the media. It's sad and it's causing a lot of self esteem issues in our society.
P.S. Have you graduated yet?
Thanks for the post. I have told many people about what was said on that video.
I'm a portrait photographer and whilst I don't like doing this level of editing on clients it's becoming more mandatory for any client. If I didn't offer this service to my clients then I would be losing business to my competitors.
At the end of the day it's making photography more time consuming for the photographer to produce this work. A basic retouch can take anything from 2 hours upwards depending on the subject.
As you briefly highlighted most of the people want this kind of makeover have confidence issues and this also has lead to a massive demand in plastic surgery.
Where does it end?
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