Digital cameras focus on revised reality

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With photo-editing packages widely available, Southwick said he has seen a change over the years in people's attitude toward the integrity of photos. During lectures or speaking engagements, Southwick asks his audience how many people have heard of Photoshop. Ten or 12 people used to raise their hands, but now everybody does. Still, as big as Photoshop's impact, Southwick said, in-camera photo-editing features will have an even greater effect on the way people relate to photography.

If pictures are indeed captured memories, as camera marketers would have consumers believe, these new features enable people to create a rosier vision of their personal history.

Spina pointed out that the creation of these tools and the fact that there is a market for them, speaks to the societal pressure to achieve physical perfection, as well as some people's deceptiveness when creating online personas.

"It almost does contribute to people changing their identities, for whatever reasons they are motivated to do that," Spina said. "Particularly, I can see it being used on a dating service. Now you can say the picture is current and still lie. But what I want to know is: What's going to finally happen when you meet that person? Even if you are not using it for that, its only interest is to make you look better. But why would you take a picture of yourself and give it to people who know you if it doesn't really look like you?"

But does it really matter? Photos have been "lying" for years in one respect or another. For example, photography from the 1940s, because it was black and white, gave a clean orderly appearance, with people in photos from that era appearing consistently crisp, with bright white teeth and seemingly matching outfits.

Spina said that he finds most technology of this nature as nothing more than entertainment. But he does see the trend leading to a larger philosophical question.

"Does social change drive technology change, or do changes in technology change social behavior?" he asked. "No one has won that debate...It just depends on where you fall on that continuum. My own personal bias is that technology advancements lead to social change."

[markdoiron]

Grow Up!

There are people who believe photos? Are these the same gullible ones who believe all that spam that the democrats are bad because they do this, and the republicans are good because they do that?

Come on, folks, grow up! Photos, unsolicited Internet e-mail, advertising and much of what the news media reports have been distorted forever! At least Jon Stewart has the nerve to admit it!

--mark d.

[jabbotts]

Yeah, John did a beutiful thing

I caught his interview a while back with a big-wig journalist who was giving him grief for reporting false news to which he replaied: "It's a comedy show"

Good on him for reporting news while providing comedy and a beutiful comentary on mainstream disinformation services.

[markdoiron]

Get Real!

There are people who believe photos? Are these the same gullible ones who believe all that spam that the democrats are bad because they do this, and the republicans are good because they do that?

Come on, folks, grow up! Photos, unsolicited Internet e-mail, advertising and much of what the news media reports have been distorted forever! At least Jon Stewart has the nerve to admit it!

--mark d.

[disco-legend-zeke]

For Legal use: GPS + MD5 checksum. WORM memory

Because there is no sure way to verify the authenticity of an electronic image, their use in a court of law is diminished.

One possible solution Write Once Read Many (WORM) memory cards and MD5 checksums would aid investigators in proving the unfakedness of their evidence photos.

I am begging SONY for a GPS reciever in a camera and editing software that could read the EXIF GPS information, and pin each photo to GOOGLE EARTH.

[shanedr]

Photographers want reality

There will always be those who want to look better than they do. But the majority want reality. A camera feature with the ability to make people look thinner may be used but not many will buy a camera for that reason. Most want easy, accurate and quick.

[baswwe]

BIG MARKET - all the women want to look think..

even the thin ones!

[jackrabbitslam]

Dig Cams

It Started a long time ago, I mean "the lying" with a camera. Chaplin did a great job, now I want to play that game too.I stopped believing the media (with a few exeptions) quite a while back.
Not taking it to serious though, perhaps
Reuter destroyed the idea completely, so now I come to the conclusion why not everybody jump on the waggon and deceive themself and others, perhaps everything is like a movie, lie back and enjoy, or leave the theater.

[amigabill]

Those aren't the fakes we're worried about

So someone wants to hide a few pounds for their vacation pix, big deal. I don't care if your fake tan came from camera software or out of a can ofdarkening lotion. Those aren't the fakes I'm concerned about.

The fakes we should care about are the photojournalists, which we've heard of altering photos for dramatic effect. That's the kind of thing which is a step toward the inner party continuously rewriting history to suit their goals, and that's what I don't like happening. I don't know if skin toning or weight hiding features can accomplish this journalistic fraud, I suspect probably not, at least for now they'll need a laptop and some decent photo editing software there.

Only when cameras can copy portions of one photo into another, such as adding a person in one photo to another photo, will truely worrisome faking be done without the help of a computer.

The biggest concern

the biggest authenticity concern isnt fancy cameras that automatically airbrush blemishes from people's faces. Its the staged news photography that so-called news outfits such as Reuters have published. Who needs a fancy camera when you can just have a kid at gunpoint pose next to an unexploded bomb?

[GTOfan]

Good point

Boy, have I seen that technique in "journalism". I am convinced that most of the "riots" and "demonstrations" that are portrayed to the public as major events are nothing more than a dozen people with a couple of dozen onlookers. I have learned that if the picture only shows 10 people, that's probably the total count, even though the photo is framed to make it look like the "crowd" goes on forever.

[moparcars2fst4u]

We wonder why people throw up to be skinny

Its so sad that HP has to make this feature availiable on there
cameras . People feel bad enough about them selfs, why does HP
need to feed to americas disorders. Thanks HP now maybe us fat
people out there will take more pictures of our selfs, and throw up
a little less. FU HP!

[mikesidea]

the real question is... who's the girl??

the real question is... who's the girl.
with or without edits; very nice :)

[CarpalDiem]

Inductive Fallacy

"But does it really matter? Photos have been "lying" for years in one respect or another. For example, photography from the 1940s, because it was black and white, gave a clean orderly appearance, with people in photos from that era appearing consistently crisp, with bright white teeth and seemingly matching outfits."

That's a hasty induction. Images don't appear more orderly just because they're monotone: Look at some Civil War battle-aftermath images for examples. Since North Americans up through the early 1960's (which I presume is the author's photographic reference culture) were crisply-pressed, snappy dressers, perhaps that's why B&W (and color) images show as much. Finally, most photo emulsions compress tonal values to some extent; B&W press emulsions do that by design, better matching the tonalities to those reproducible on newsprint. Off-white values get pushed towards white, and light-colored objects such as teeth teeth are represented as more white. That's necessary compromise in image reproduction, not lying. That most mid-20th century press images were exposed using flash units certainly contributed to the crisp appearance of those images, but that no more results in a lying image than the sun suddenly shining on a formerly overcast scene you're viewing and causing an increase in contrast.

[GlennAl]

What's the old saying?...

the camera puts on 10 pounds? Well, not any more. (Of course, you can still make it do that, too.)