Some Thoughts on Manipulation in Photography

            My original plan was to bring in a camera tomorrow, to speak on the powers of manipulation and deception that photographers can wield. Last class, John pretty much covered it all, so I realized I would have to pick another object to bring in. I figured I’d share some of my thoughts on the deceptive aspects of photography in my blog post instead.

            A photographer captures a single moment in time through a photograph, one that can even be edited and twisted to become something completely different than the original photo. One instance in which this happened was during a family vacation to Europe a couple years ago. We were at a little lookout over the beautiful city of Zurich, and it was a perfectly sunny day. My mom wanted to snap a couple photos of my brother, my sister, and me. One of these photos was chosen to adorn the front of our annual Christmas card. It depicted the three of us smiling, with a quaint European city in the background. A perfect family right? Little do many viewers of that card know, that we had been arguing the whole day about various little disagreements. In fact, I had to try pretty hard to force a smile for the picture, and I’m pretty sure my brother and sister were in the same boat.

            A more recent example occurred on a climbing trip to the Adirondacks. Right at dusk I snapped a photo from the clifftop, depicting beautiful mountains seemingly stretching on forever and the great Sacandaga River below, all bathed in the pinkish light of the sunset. Again, that picture does not tell the whole story. On my way up to the mountains, I got pulled over for speeding. The approach to the cliff was longer than my partner and I had anticipated. On our third climb, my partner cut her hand on the rock, leaving her unable to climb for the day. We had to hike back to the car in the dark, and ended up doing a very unpleasant bushwhack through thick pines in the dark to return to the car. Anyone who simply views that photo of the mountains is completely clueless to the real story of the day.