Skin Deep—The Art and Artifice of Photo Retouching
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I found myself staring at a big photo of a McDonald’s hamburger on the Metro, and you could see the water droplets on the tomato slice. Now, if you think about it, a hot hamburger doesn’t include a tomato slice that’s cool and fresh enough to have water drops on the rim. This was obviously faked. Yet the composition was perfect (and I haven’t eaten meat in 30 years). I admire the aesthetics. That said, I don’t think everybody realizes commercial photos are tampered with. Strong images evoke a visceral reaction that draws on our emotions, not our intellect. That’s why these images are so satisfying on some level; they present us with images of perfection that appease our desire for symmetry and harmony.
If you’ve seen the super scary Ralph Lauren ad with the woman whose head is bigger than her hips, you realize that PS has gone too far. That being said, I use it all of the time to “enhance” images I’ve taken.
As one who retouches images for a living, I’d say that labeling images as such does cross a line. It’s as bad as telling me not to use my hot tub cover as a flotation device or the warnings I saw on a beach ball that covered nearly the entire circumference. Yes, OK, I’m not going to use my beach ball for magical rides to candy land.
Can we just not make a small mental note to ourselves for the rest of our lives…ALL PHOTOS PUBLISHED ARE TINKERED WITH. Yes. They are. They always have been.
Ansel Adams was a major photo tweaker. You think those Wagnerian landscapes looked like that all the time? He worked your mind’s eye with “dodging” and “burning” and so does Madison Ave with Photoshop - from the way a drop of milk splashes off a strawberry on your cereal box to the way a model’s eyes and lips seem to sparkle.
Do I need to wear a label that says I whitened my teeth or that you lightened your hair?
By the same token, it would be good for everyone to realize in general that just b/c you have seen it, doesn’t mean it has really happened. (Just like Fox - you can say things that simply aren’t true.) There are many, many visual hoaxes floating around the Internet to investigate before you send them out to all your friends.
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