A. Obama

A photojournalist is supposed to be unbiased and to only shoot what
they see, right? Well how can that be when the photos taken are
cleaned, edited, manipulated, skewed, etc.

Can I say this image was manipulated? Not in the sense that we have
grown to accept.
Not like when Brady moved dead Civil War bodies to make a better
picture.
Not even when a guy can take one shot of a soldier looking one way and
a second shot taken a split second afterwards of civilians looking
another and digitally place them together.
What I do mean is when a photographer nowadays can take hundreds of
photos of a man at a podium and an editor can choose one that makes
him look like Das Feurer.
Personally, I think it is hilarious how easy and manipulated a
population is today.
Do you think an Obama supporter would ever run this in his pape? Even
if it was the only photo available?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Aaron,

Glad to see you're doing well post Navy!

Thought I would comment on the Obama photo. I agree with you totally about the manipulation - most viewers don't understand how subtle messages can be communicated in an image just by the positioning, timing, lighting and editorial choice that results in a particular image being published.

At the same time, it's rather refreshing to see Obama in a rather unflattering light since nearly all of U.S. media have him tagged as the new savior. Couldn't find the original AP image, but here's a link to the typical example:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2194/2281055958_2ff2cfc2c5.jpg

The image you've posted is not being carried en masse ... hmmm ... would that be manipulation as well?

All my best
Leslie
LAShively@aol.com