Pictures that Lie

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A picture can't lie, goes the old adage. At one time, a photograph of an event was regarded as proof that it actually occurred. With the rise of photoshop, photoshop elements, and other photo editing software, however, this is no longer true. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Making a fantasy land where turtles fly and elephant-headed zebras with lion tails roam New York City can be entertaining. It's acceptable because the audience knows it's obviously a fake. It is also generally acceptable to blur a portion of an image to make superimposed text more readable, to crop an image to make it fit a page, etc. According to Nic Bishop, an award-winning photographer, "It's the scientific integrity of the picture itself that's important" (Bringelson). If viewers are aware that the photo has been manipulated, that manipulation isn't detrimental.

Photo manipulation becomes harmful--unethical, even--when an extensively altered photo is presented to the audience as the "real thing."

In one such instance, Lui Weiquang, a Chinese photographer, grafted a photograph of a group of endangered Tibetan antelopes peacefully grazing onto a picture of the new Qinghai-Tibet railway, which had been regarded as disruptive to the antelope population. By so doing, Weiquang "justify[ed] the controversial project as environmental friendly" ("Photo of Antelopes Unperturbed..."). In fact, the photo was titled, "Qinghai-Tibet Railway Opening, Green Passageway for Animals. He later admitted to the manipulation, admitting that he had waited for two weeks for the animals to come near the train, but that "they never did." I wonder why, Lin. It's because, clearly, the railway was disturbing to the antelopes.

This story inspired my photo. I wanted to create a photo supporting a controversial economic move, not because I myself support it, but to show how easily companies could alter photographs to protect their own interests. So, I created an image in which a dolphin is frolicking (presumably happily) in the midst of an oil spill (something that would never happen--in fact, oil in the water can lead to hypothermia, congested lungs/damaged airways, eye and skin lesions, and secondary organ dysfunction, to name a few. For more information, click here). It is the type of photo that could have been used by a company like Exxon-Valdez could have used after their oil spill to prove that they didn't really do that much harm.

Had I actually published the photo for an oil company, it would have been extremely harmful, as it might have caused an audience member to believe that oil spills are not harmful to marine life. It is "very important," Nic Bishop asserts, "never to produce a photograph that is being manipulated in such a way that it shows incorrect behavior of an animal" (Bringelson). Clearly, this image is depicting the incorrect behavior of an animal. (Because it was made for educational purposes, of course, it's fine.)

Using the magnetic lasso tool, I extrapolated the dolphin from its original photograph and put it on a layer in front of the oil spill picture. Then, I duplicated the background, cropped it to about half its size, feathered it, and layered that over the dolphin's tale, creating the illusion that the dolphin was leaping out of the water. In addition, I made the oil spill picture look less disgusting by going to enhance, color, change hue and saturation; I made the reds and yellows less saturated and lighter, and the blues more saturated. Lastly, I added a text layer, changed the font style, matched the font color to the color of the water, and added a bevel. (You can see the original photos at the bottom of this post.)

Let this be a lesson--next time you look at an image, keep in mind the fact that it just may have been doctored.



Bringelson, Carin, and Nick Glass. "Tenacity and Ethics of Scientific Photography."
School Library Monthly 26.7 (2010): 25. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web.
12 Apr. 2010.
"Effects of Oil on Marine Wildlife." Global Marine Oil Pollution Gateway. United Nations
Environmental Program. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.
"Photos of Angelopes Unperturbed by Tibet Train Exposed as Fake." Tibetan Review: The Monthly Magazine on all Aspects of Tibet 43, no 3 (March 2008): 4. Academic Search Complete. EbSCOhost. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.