There are two common types of equipment for taking photos, first is the traditional film camera which has a long history. The second is the digital camera which was developed in the last quarter of the 20th century. Both of them are designed to produce images. Throughout the history of mankind, writing, drawing and spoken language have been the only three ways to record information until the camera was invented which became an extra option. Photos are proved to be a lot more effective for recording in certain areas. However, photo is also a double edged sword unfortunately.
We are living in the age of information. I would not be wrong if I say that we all are surrounded by photos everywhere in our daily life. However, there is one thing people need to take notice is that photo doesn’t necessary equal to truth because there exists image tampering. Thanks to technology, we have software like “Photoshop” which helps us easily modify an image in any way you wish. Depends on the amount of modification, the original message or the impact of an image can be changed completely. As a result, we may be easily misled by a photo if we trust it entirely. Therefore, we should not regard photo as physical evidence, instead we should use it as a reference or visual aid. This is similar to the situation of Wikipedia where anyone can edit the content of articles.
I once heard of an interesting thought saying that every photo cannot be “real” simply because it is a photo, no matter it is taken by a film or a digital camera. The question is how do we define the word “real”? We normally distinguish a real image from a fake one by judging whether the objects in the photo really exist and the appearance is identical in the real world. If we just focus on the photo itself, regardless of the meaning or the impact it brought. For a photo without any modification, either it is directly developed from a film or captured in digital format, two out of the three primary elements of an image, line and shape, can look almost the same as the original object. However, for the last element, colour, is a lot more difficult to achieve. In terms of colour accuracy, photos are sometimes much different from what your eyes actually see unless you take pictures with the most high end camera and view the photo using a professional computer display. For most of us, the different brands and models of camera we use can produce varied images with the same scene, even in a controlled situation, where lighting, angle, position are the same. This may be the reason that people sometimes ask why the photo doesn’t seem to be real even though they know it is not a fake one. Therefore, can we decide which image is really presenting the true colours of the object? If not, can we still trust the appearance of an object in a photo?
To enrich the idea of a “real” photo, the two examples below is an experiment in photography I’ve done in the past as a hobby. The photo on the left hand side is the original without any modification, came out straight from a memory card. The photo on the right hand side is modified by making adjustments carefully to improve colour accuracy. The goal of this experiment is to capture a truly real photo which means it is very close to the reality. This is done by using naked eyes to calibrate the photo in detail at the same place as where the photo is taken immediately after it is taken.
The result is a photo which is almost identical to what you actually see in reality. No professional equipment like DSLR was used, but only a simple digital camera which is widely available in the consumer market.
People nowadays have different purposes to modify a photo. Some of them only want to remove the impurities from a photo so that they can have a good looking photo to share with friends. This kind of modification is generally acceptable. However, sometimes image tampering can cause a lot of troubles. Even large corporation like Microsoft use fake photo on their website. The following photo was reported on the Microsoft’s Polish website in August last year.
Although Microsoft didn’t give out any official explanation and the reason remained unknown, people suspect of racism and they feel bad about this because they wouldn’t expect such a large company would use this rather unpleasant technique.
In conclusion, I personally would advise we treat a photo just like a piece of art. Artist can do paintings freely without any restriction. They won’t be penalized because of presenting something not real. When people look at a painting, they simply focus only on the beauty and seldom have a thought of trusting anything from the painting. We all should remind ourselves that a computer only provide us a virtual platform. For example, a folder in a hard disk is not an actual folder made of paper we use for filing paperwork and the recycling bin on your desktop is not the same as a one in the real world, it is just a symbol indicating where we moved the unwanted data to. We are only looking at a screen and that’s all. For a photo print, it is just a piece of paper filled with ink, similar to a canvas with paints. What’s the point of caring about whether some virtual stuff is true or not?
There is another very good example I can think of. The movie “Matrix” expressed the idea “Seeing (or even feeling) is not believing” thoroughly. How can we prove that the world we are living, the world we know is actually real, but not a simulated reality? This brings the whole question to a new and more complex level. To keep our life simple, my suggestion would be trust a photo only if necessary. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be worthwhile having our life disturbed by over focusing on the trueness of a photo.
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