I’m not too sure if this is relevant, but this reminds me of a time when this famous Kuching blogger, Kennysia, witnessed a horrible car accident. He recieved alot of flake for posting pictures of the accident, being accused of trying to increase his blog hits.
In a situation like this, is it ethical to post pictures that involves death and (quite) horrifying images? By the way, he had placed a disclaimer stating that the members of the family of the victims agreed to let him post the pictures on his blog. As a viewer, we already had the choice to look at the pictures, or close the window. Many people chose to look at the pictures and read the blog post, and commented that he was being insensitive for posting such pictures.
I feel that he didn’t do anything wrong. For one, he did stick to The Golden Mean (haha) – he found the middle ground in blogging that post – but not in the process of taking the pictures of course. But I guess it’s still questionable, about why he took pictures when he was there helping. It must be some kind of journalist/blogger instinct to do such stuffs (okay I blog and I feel compelled to take pictures anytime anywhere).
Anyway, back to the blog exercise.
It was awhile ago that I saw this video and was utterly amazed. I can’t believe that photoshop can actually do such things. But after “playing around” with it for awhile I’m truly convinced. It really can do anything that you want, ie if you’re good at it! So what are the ways that readers can judge the credibility of the image in this era which photo manipulation is so common? (Sidetrack: I’m sure we photo-manipulate our pictures from time to time- the pimple here, the weird looking mark on your face.. etc. It’s almost like a form of make up. But it will be highly horrfying if it’s too different from your original face.)
Since I started off with a video about weight and beauty, I shall talk about the issue of how digitally manipulated photos reinforces our very warped perception of beauty.
An example will be those weight loss ads that we see around all the time. I think somehow, it should be known to people that most of the advertisments are thoroughly photoshopped. That is, either the “before” pictures were uglified so much, or the “after” – as in the effects of the treatment, was brushed up too much (as we can see from the video, it isn’t really that hard afterall).
What we, as readers can do for these genre of photographs regarding body and beauty is to be more critical – sometimes we get so excited over seeing the “effects” of the treatment that we totally forgot that advertisements are advertisements – they don’t tell the truth all the time.
For other genres, for example, edited photographs from Times that were shown in lecture, I feel that we should try to judge for ourselves and maybe, do some research if we feel that it looks abit fishy.
The second question of whether what I would tell a reader who complained to me about a picture of a car wreck that was particularly upsetting if i were a reader representative is pretty much answered in the first part of this entry. However, the medium is different. A blog is not a newspaper – which is supposed to be more credible. I would probably tell him/her that the picture is the true reflection of what happened. Unless a wider audience feels the same way, I would reconsider and think through next time it happens. The picture must also not be too gory to the effect of scaring, rather than telling facts. Further more, permission of the family should be sought if the picture is potentially disturbing, or it will show some parts of the body of the deceased.
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!