{"id":1379,"date":"2020-10-25T12:43:13","date_gmt":"2020-10-25T12:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toonsarah-travels.blog\/staging\/?p=1379"},"modified":"2021-03-28T12:51:14","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T11:51:14","slug":"friendly-friday-photo-challenge-smoke-mirrors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toonsarah-travels.blog\/staging\/friendly-friday-photo-challenge-smoke-mirrors\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoke and mirrors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some say the camera never lies. But does it? Even before technology made it possible to alter reality, photographers were playing around with tricks and illusions. Ghosts, spirits, fairies \u2026 all appeared in photographs.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most famous of those early illusions is this, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s wife taken in 1870 after his death. At the time people were convinced that his ghost was captured in the photo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Old
Old photo of Lincoln’s wife <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Today it is easier than ever to edit an image; to fool the viewer into seeing something that was never there, or not seeing something that was. Can we ever trust what our eyes are telling us, or is photo editing just smoke and mirrors<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another question \u2013 does it matter? Does it matter that a photographer may have altered an image before presenting it to the world? Feelings can run high on this, perhaps because people don\u2019t like to think they\u2019ve been fooled. My own view is that it depends on the purpose of the image. If it\u2019s important that it presents an accurate record of an event or place, then clearly any editing beyond minor tweaks (to adjust lighting, straighten a horizon, etc.) is unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about photography as art, where the purpose of the photo is to spark the imagination, create an emotional response in the viewer? Then, it seems to me, any amount of manipulation is acceptable (although it’s arguable that the photographer should be open about the ‘tricks’ employed). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my part, I strive to produce the best images I can, even if that means playing around with the originals to create something I find more pleasing to the eye and more reflective of how I perceived the scene rather than how the camera recorded it. Our brains are very clever at filtering out what we don\u2019t want to see \u2013 telephone wires, ugly street furniture, a stray person wandering into the background of a shot. Photo-editing can remove those distractions to create a more aesthetically pleasing, if not totally accurate, record of a scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have a look at the following three images. I took the first two on a game drive in India\u2019s Ranthambore National Park. We were on the hunt for tigers but although we\u2019d seen one the previous evening, on this early morning drive they eluded us. No problem \u2013 there were lots of interesting birds to see and photograph. I spotted these two bulbuls in a bush very near our vehicle, undisturbed by our presence and happy to pose. Or so it seemed. But whenever I pressed the shutter one or the other would turn its head away from me. It proved impossible to get an image in which both were in profile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n