Tuesday, November 10, 2009

My picture that lies & discussion


This is my picture that lies.
It is composed of two photos. The one on the background is a photo I took on the parking lot of Trinity with the bell towel at the back. The one on top is a photo of me and my grandma, which we took during summer this year. I chose these two pictures because they are easy to manipulate and kind of fitting together. I think both of them look pretty nice before being photoshoped, and looks even better after I put them together.
I manipulated it in three ways: first and most obvious, I extracted two of us from the original photo and pasted it on the background. Second, I made some changes on hue/saturation and brightness of the picture to make it look more "real". Last, I changed the date to today's to make it look like we just took it recently.
I chose to manipulate the photos this way because my grandma has never been to the U.S., and she probably will never be. Therefore, I faked the photo as if we were in Trinity together. Our dream came true in this picture!
The only reason that this picture could be harmful is that it causes the opposite effect -my grandma became more upset by seeing this picture as it reminds her that she cannot come to visit me in my college. But I think it is very unlikely.
I own the copyright of these two pictures, so I should be able to do whatever I wish. Therefore, the manipulation was not harmful.
Now I will talk about the article -journals find many images in researches are faked. I think either altering or polishing images in researches are definitely wrong, no matter what your purposes are. As this quote says: " "We like dirt -- not all gels run perfectly," she says. "Beautification is not necessary. If your data is solid, it shines through."" Especially in a science journal, honesty is highly demand.

2 comments:

  1. This is awesome girl! Haha at first I thought it was the original, it looks so real! And the idea/motivation for your photograph is so sweet, I absolutely love it!

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  2. You did such a great job with this, Rella! It looks so real...I couldn't believe that you doctored this image. Really well done!! :-)

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