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Photoshopping: Hey, They’ve Only Just Begun
This photo of President Obama and his national security staff hunkered down in the White House Situation Room as the Navy SEAL team raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound unfolded has a lock on 2011 Picture of the Year. Well, at least for non-meteorological events.
That in turn has triggered an orgy of Photoshopped versions. Kill a few brain cells feasting on the details in the version below. Yes, that’s an ice cream cone in Hillary’s hand.
Even had the technology been available, it’s difficult to image Photoshopping, say, the famous photo of Marines raises the American flag atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi in one of the concluding battles of World War II. Then again, how about raising a McDonald’s Golden Arches instead of the flag?
5 Responses to “Photoshopping: Hey, They’ve Only Just Begun”
Of course that photo out Mount Suribachi was staged some time after the battle – the photoshop of the day.
Yeah, there’s always some wise ass to undercut an example like this one.
Although as a fellow career photog you too are aware that some of the greatest pix in photojournalism history were staged or altered for greater effect.
“Photoshopping” is what has kept the checkout-line tabloids in business for years. Even before there was a Photoshop to give it the name.
DavidMtem:
You are correct, and while the software engineers who wrote Photoshop codes are brilliant, they didn’t have the chops of their predecessors, who were airbrush artists.
These guys (and a few women) could, as the saying went, put teats on a bull, and I worked with some of the greatest until the advent of the Macintosh-Photoshop tandem in the late 1980s when they were put out to pasture.
This was my favorite photoshop job of this photo, in response to the Hasidic newspaper that edited out the 2 women in the photograph:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/05/11/lady-problems/