Seeing the Mirage: The Darkside of Photography

I’ve become increasingly agitated when girls come to me and ask me to take some high-quality, professional photographs of them. The problem, the vast majority of the time, is by “high-quality” they really mean “magazine-quality.”

And unless the photos match up to the images the media bombards them with, they’ll hate it. I’ve shot some amazing photos of girls who have taken one look at my work and wanted me to delete or destroy the pictures entirely.

All self esteem issues aside, it’s always intrigued me why girls almost uniformly reject realistic images of themselves — even high quality, professional ones.

It always comes back to the great mass-media conglomerate of our culture. There’s been a lot of public outcry over the way “the media” defines beauty. Big boobs, small waists and surgery to fix whatever natural blemishes you were unfortunate enough to be cursed with. The standard is indeed high and seems to keep gaining altitude with every passing year.

Unfortunately, skinny supermodels with fake breasts (who are employed in ample numbers by “the media”) are not the root cause of the problem. I believe photographers are the real culprits.

Photography, you see, is the art of lying.

What society is just beginning to understand is the pictures in every glossy magazine that looks omnipotently down at us while we’re at the checkout lines in grocery stories and Wal-Mart are fabrications. Everyone knows about Photoshopping and all the wonderful things it can do to images. Most people can objectively see a cover of fashion magazine and recognize the plastic-looking “Barbie skin” that each model magically possess is, in fact, not real and a byproduct of excessive airbrushing.

Most mainstream magazines have gotten clever. Their images are still heavily modified in programs like Photoshop, but done so with more skill and finesse and with greater moderation.

Photographers use better lighting from the get go (photography, at its core is just the manipulation of light) and selective sharpening to cover up what make-up artists can’t. Professional photo shoots are by their nature so staged and rigged using expensive equipment and sets that it staggers the mind when you even think of people trying to live up to the fantasy the pros craft.

After the shoot, Photoshopping images is still the norm but done so to preserve intentional flaws and characteristics in a model’s skin while cleverly masking other elements.

So, let me give an example.

In 2004, I was in Los Angeles covering E3 doing both editorial and photography work (not to mention playing all the latest games). The worst booths were always stuck down in an area of the LA Convention Center called the Kentia. It was there I had the opportunity to meet and shoot Victoria Silversdt.

For those not in the know, Victoria is one of Europe’s biggest models. She was runner-up in the Ms. Sweden pageant, did Ms. Universe, modeled in Playboy (former Playmate of the Month, no less), hosts TV and has been in several films where she lives up to every conceivable stereotype her outward appearance suggests.

Here is how she looks in all her glory when exposed to a harsh flash in normal lighting circumstances, followed by a photoshopped version.

Notice how she looks like a transgendered man in the first photo, and a refined version of a teenage boy’s wetdream.

Amazing how post-processing work can make all the difference, isn’t it?

In the latter, more mainstream representation of Ms. Silversdt, I performed the following actions:

• Selectively sharpened the face and eyes
• Blurred the blackground
• Removed noise
• Removed botches on skin
• Airbrushed the skin
• Altered her skin’s overall color
• Whitened her teeth
• Softened the contrast
• De-saturated the colors and strategically emphasized other colors (blue, yellow, etc)

And that was only a rush job done by an amateur.

Compare the before and after — and then scroll up and view the “professional” treatment she received from the European magazine. The photo I took of her was more realistic to how she appears in real life.

(If you want to know how good a woman’s skin really is, use the harshest flash in your camera bag and fire away.)

I was 20 years old when I shot these for a feature I was doing for IGN. I remember being frustrated at how unpublishable they were. Back then, I had the philosophy that your raw photo is as good as it gets. How times change — I spend hours tweaking even my best photos in Photoshop now.

Returning to my main point, mainstream photography really is deceptive.

As anyone can plainly see, even the icons of beauty and the sex goddesses of Playboy are a sham. It takes expert light manipulation, camera skills and Photoshop expertise to manufacture an exposure of the caliber the mainstream media considers attractive.

In other words, the images you see aren’t real. These beautiful people don’t exist. They never have.

Girls are not holding themselves up to an unfair standard, they’re holding themselves up to a standard that has no basis in reality.

And the sooner girls become self-aware that true beauty is carrying yourself with confidence and taking a reasonable amount of time and care to maintain their outward appearance (without using 5 pounds of cosmetic goop) the the happier they will be.

June 22nd, 2007 in Commentary, Photography |