Artical Response #2

People all over the world look to the news and magazines for some source of guidance’s on what’s going on in the world. Whether it is too look at celebrities for their looks and fashion sense or news articles for what is happening in the world. Doctored photos give people the wrong impression of what is happening in any kind of news. According to the journal article Applied Cognitive Psychology “the use of doctored photos can influence what people think they remember from an incident, as well as altering their attitudes and any subsequent responses.” This is giving us the reader a blurred line of what the truth really is. That is what is so wrong with changing the content of a photograph you are giving the reading false information as well as false hope.

When you look at magazines and see all the celebrities and how thin and beautiful they are many young girls strive to look like them in all aspects. Young girls starve themselves to be a size zero when most celebrities are not even really a size zero. The don’t eat certain things so they wont get acne. When really the use of Photoshop on many celebrities is the only reason they have clear beautiful skin. Just like TV editing, computers let people doctor up photos to make them look like something is happening when it never did. A prime example of this is displayed in both articles. In National Press Photographers Association, Newsweek magazine used an altered photo of Martha Stewart on there cover. Martha head was put onto of a supermodels body to give the illusion that this was what Martha really looked liked. Time also doctored the mugshot of O.J Simpson making him look darker and more like a criminal while Newsweek ran the same photo in its original content. These are the types of photos that I feel are considered deceptive. They are not protecting anyone from seeing something horrible they are helping change the appearance of someone to make them look better or make them out to be what the writer feels they should be prorated as and that is not right. In the article Pictures may not lie but doctored photos change history two different protests were used to create an image that never existed. By using photos from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and the 2003 anti-war protest in Rome the writer was able to doctor the Rome photo and make it look like the there was riot police and a menacing with masked protesters in the crowed. When in reality this was a peaceful protest and now people remember it as something that was way more violent then it really was. By using the information given in the articles about what the people saw at this protest these writers were able to change history. The photographer has the power to choose the shot. He can decide what aspect of the story he wants to cover and by the way he stands or at what time he captures what someone is doing you are given a comply different image then what was really there. This is a power that no person should be able to posses.

There are some types of legitimate editing for a picture. When a shot is to dark and the photographer lightens it up, crops the picture does subtle changes with the tons to bring out the natural beauty that he has already captured in his photo. A real photographer I feel does not need to Photoshop things in to make a photo great they already have the skills and talent that they need .Legitimate editing I feel is editing the photographer does not to label someone or something with their beliefs or way of thinking. Legitimate editing in my opinion is a no feelings picture. Just like a judge has to be neutral in court case so does a photographer when he is capturing the story.

Pictures leave a lasting impression in the readers mind. That is why an increase of deceptive photos is a real problem “the tendency to use more illustrations and fewer real photojournalistic images is blurring the line between opinion and truth.” I don’t feel that photos should be doctored at all to help make someone look better. As a girl I am sucked into the gossip magazines that follow these celebrities. Growing up I didn’t know that this is not really what these girls looked like and I went through the same faze that many teenage girls go through today. I wanted to look like the celebrities. I hated my body and thought that all girls had to be a size one. That is something extremely hard for any girl to go through and brings there self esteem down completely. That is what these photographers do when they doctor up what people look like. They are giving people the impression all over the world that there is only one acceptable way to look and if you don’t look like that then you don’t fit it.

The same goes for events where photographers change things to make the situation look worse or better then it really is that is giving the people the wrong idea and false information. In the article Pictures May not lie I think a quote said by Dario Sacchi sums up the idea of doctored photos “Any media that employ digitally doctored photographs will have a stronger effect then merely influencing our opinion, by tampering with our malleable memory, they may ultimately change the way we recall history.” With a line so blurred between truth and lies it’s up to us to be able to find the truth in every picture now matter how small that truth may be.