General News
General News Posts
Digital Tampering – a possible solution?
Should we allow images used in media to be extensively edited?
From my perspective, absolutely.Creating a perfect image is a key element to making a product or service desirable.
Can it cause problems in society where being constantly subject to seeing these images can affect our perceptions?
Undoubtedly.
In the same way that a percentage of the population are more susceptible to hypnotism or subliminal messaging, we will all be influenced at some level by what we see every day.Should we put disclaimers on images that are edited in magazines, billboards etc….?
Yes, I believe that we should have a something on the images so we know they’ve been retouched.
How can we find a middle ground that doesn’t have ugly distracting banners taking a percentage of the image in the same way cigarette packets have the warning labels on them …. which don’t work. I know friends that bought skull&crossbone cigarettes because they were perceived to be more dangerous (go figure)
I thought of a possible solution:
Rather than obscuring a part of the image with a white warning box, why not put small colour (or greyscale) circles/squares subtly in the corner of the image or page which relates to the editing work that was carried out.It could be ISO standardised so that it’s the same for everyone to use, or alternatively each magazine could have their own key chart shown in the bottom of the MastHead.
For example:
Blue: Colour change (e.g. eyes, clothes, skin)
Red: Blemish Removal
Green: Texture alterations
Yellow: Shape changing (Liquefy/Stretch/Shrink, bigger eyelashes, narrower thighs etc..)
Grey: Added extra elements (CGI, blending other images)Here’s a rough example of how it could look.
Everyone should be happy 🙂
Advertisers keep their perfect images and consumers subconsciously know it’s been enhanced away from reality.So, what’s your opinion on how images should be shown in the media? Edited or warts ‘n all? 🙂
Cameras are the weakest link
How easy is it to just point, shoot and print?
Thanks to new technology advancing rapidly, it’s becoming easier and easier to take pictures and create usable images.But what technology can’t do are the 2 most important parts to make an amazing image.
1) Know/create what you want to shoot, compose it and light it. (the bit before)
2) Once you have your image, post-process it properly to maximise it’s impact (the bit after)If you have your camera in auto mode like most point and shoots then it’ll try to figure out the right exposure and white balance for you. This is almost never the creative’s option (at least not for me) as you have virtually no control of the results.
What it will do is make a guesstimate and give you something to look at, although it may not be what you had in mind.Below is an example of a point and shoot image which I processed into something usable
Image courtesy of Andrew Winton This image was taken by my dad on a recent winter holiday. Not a bad way to spend Christmas Eve 🙂
He requested that I print it for him on a large canvas for his birthday (via Canvas My Art) and on initial viewing it looked like I could make something of it. It had interesting compositional elements, but it wasn’t lit so well (nothing a reflector couldn’t fix) and the JPG file I was given was big enough to work on to minimise loss of quality during editing.
It’s easy to see the difference that my simple changes made in post-production. It’s often the area that people overlook or assume it’s not important, but as you can see it can really make or break an image.
As a professional image maker I’ll try to get it right in-camera so that the (sometimes hundreds of) images I edit only require minor adjustments. The quicker we can edit the quicker we can get out there and make more images.
But, no matter how far advanced or (in)expensive our camera are, only having skill and vision in all areas will consistently return quality results.
A or B? The results are in
Follow-on from post: https://www.callumw.com/blog/which-do-you-prefer-a-or-b
Thanks to all of you who took 2 minutes out of your busy schedules to take a break and explore my 2 images below before picking your favourite.
A) 
B) 
The response to this was phenomenal. Emails, twitter messages and comments flowed in from high-end agencies to boutique design studios.
Thank you all, it made my week 🙂And so – skip to the chase ….
All the replies have been totted up and the favourite image,
selected (by a landslide of 2:1) was ……. *drum roll*…… B But the question you may be asking is "do you get a print ….. ?"
I so appreciate the positive feedback I received that I decided to fire up the big Epson ink spitter and print off a couple more, so keep an eye on your inboxes as there may be and email from me asking you to confirm your delivery address, so I can send your voted favourite right to your doorstep 🙂
Pushing the Photography Envelope
… with a pinch of salt 🙂
