After careful thought and consideration of the topic, the question, “can we trust photos?” can only really be answered by opinion. What we should ask, is this photo coming from a reliable source? In today’s society images are being altered to that particular person’s likes and dislikes, either by a photo app, photoshop, filters on the camera, even by the lighting or angle of which the picture is being taken. Even retail, makeup, and other companies use photoshop to sell and promote their products. Photos now are harder to trust as technology progress, and as it continues to progress it gets more and more difficult. Taking and researching about this particular topic the realization of how much our pictures and pictures everywhere are processed one way or another through a type of alteration to appease the audience of the company or person via social media.
Especially back when photography first started to capture the attention of the people it was intriguing. Back in 1839, when the first photograph was taken by William Henry Fox Talbot, the world first stood still, so to speak. Pictures were unaltered, there was no photoshop, filters, or any way of alteration. Images were more trusted, but as time went in 1987 photoshop was invented by two brothers by the names Thomas and John Knoll. After they sold the program to Adobe a year later other companies saw the new program as a selling point. Pictures of people started to be twisted by the alteration to please the viewers, pictures of products are continually being filtered to make the color pop or smooth, even foods in restaurants, fast food, and grocery stores jump to this opportunity, their foods have never looked so perfect, fruit that looks like it came straight out of a fairytale, picture perfect.
With all the new and even old technology it is hard to say what can be trusted. Social media is full of unrealistic photos of people that portray themselves to be something else, unrealistic. A photoshop master in China, nicknamed Photoshop Holly, is known for her realistic crazy photoshop skills. Her job, according her, is to make people skinny and beautiful for her customers social media followers, but even she says, if you want to know someone do not rely on social media, meet them in person to know the real them. Even the news, for instance, back when Bigfoot was a big deal new stations and newspaper companies were flooded with images of quote unquote Bigfoot himself. Images that were proven false and others undetermined, and because of the many false images the battle of is he real or is he a myth is unsolved. No one has ever presented a hands down realistic picture of Bigfoot. Most Likely there never will be either, because of the many tricks of photo manipulations.
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Although saying, photos are forever to be not trusted because of the many others who do manipulate their photos, would be unwise, but is has people second guessing a photo when they see it. So can we trust photos? Yes and no, yes if you know the owner of the picture is a reliable source, a trusted individual, and no if the source is unknown, and there is a big chance they photo was altered in a way if it is on social media. Knowing where and whom the picture came from is a helpful way to know whether or not the picture is to be trusted.
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop
- https://www.boredpanda.com/fake-photoshopped-social-media-images-kanahoooo-china/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
