Pictures That Lie

 

The picture that I chose to manipulate was a picture from the first landing on the moon.  It is known that the US was the first to land on the moon.  Before we landed on the moon there was a space race to see if we could make it to the moon before the Soviet Union did.  For my picture I ultimately ended up replacing the American flag with the Soviet Union flag to make it seem like the Soviet Union landed on the moon first.  I found my picture of the man on the moon in Google images and the picture of the Soviet Union flag on Corbis.  The first thing that I did to alter the image was to change the brightness of the flag.  The image of the flag was better lit than the one of the man on the moon.  I made the flag less bright so the two pictures would match.  Then I had to flip the flag over the vertical axis.  This was because if I didn’t then I would have to do a better job erasing the American flag and because if I didn’t then the soviet flag might have covered up the man.  The next thing I did was black out the American flag because the Soviet flag is not the same shape as the American flag in the picture.  Then I laid the Soviet flag over the spot where the American flag was.  I think this image is harmful to people who aren’t educated about the space race.  They might believe that the Soviets were the first people to land on the moon when in fact they were not.  However, I don’t think that this image is terribly harmful because most people know who landed on the moon first.  I chose this picture because it is a classic example of someone rewriting history.  I think that is important to know how easy it is to alter history and that some images of history have been altered, so you should always be a little skeptical.

For part of this assignment we are supposed to find an article on line about altering photos like the one you see above, which I altered.  I found an interesting article about a girl after she won the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee.  She was celebrating and there was a sign around her neck with her number, hometown and sponsor (The Daily News).  The Posts is a rival with Daily News.  A picture was taken for the Post.  Someone in the Post altered the photo so it did not show her sponsor because they didn’t want anyone to know it was the Daily News who sponsored her.  The Post got caught changing the photo and it was all over the New York City dailies.  I chose this article because it is an example of people altering photos to tell a different story.  The fact that they were caught and had to pay the consequences of bad press made this article even better.  It’s good to know that people will be held responsible for their actions.  Both the article and my picture have changed events in the past to tell a new story.

Article Citation

Jones, Stacy. "Altered photo faux pas." Editor & Publisher 130.24 (1997): 11. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Nov. 2010.