Author Topic: Want to resist the post-truth age? Learn to analyze photos like an expert would  (Read 427 times)

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Offline ABX

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“When photography was invented,” photo historian Vicki Goldberg once said, “it was thought to be an equivalent to truth. It was truth with a capital T.”

But as viewers quickly learned, seeing isn’t always believing......

....All of us, liberal, conservative, or otherwise, must be willing to abandon partisan loyalty in favor of logically considering the information presented to us. With photographs, as with all information, audiences should be skeptical. But knowing how to analyze images is critical to the future of our democracy.....

https://qz.com/902573/want-to-resist-the-post-truth-age-learn-to-analyze-photos-like-an-expert-would/



Offline Smokin Joe

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All of us, liberal, conservative, or otherwise, must be willing to abandon partisan loyalty in favor of logically considering the information presented to us.

Some of us have been saying this for a while now--and that doesn't mean changing 'sides', but sticking to principle, and weighing information (while considering the source and the veracity and/or bias and/or agenda thereof) against those principles.

Some 40+ years ago I had a college room mate who was in the growing field of "Communication Arts". He showed me a few tricks with camera angles and lighting angles that made the same scene look completely different. Crowds disappeared, or seemed to appear in close shots depending on angle. People were threatening or humble depending on angle (looking up vs looking down), They could go from saintly to sinister, vigorous to weary and on the verge of collapse depending on the light and the angle it came from. So much could be done in a science that has been honed to a razor's edge since.

Critical analysis, whether it be from 'friend' or foe, is mandated.

I no longer want to believe, I want to know.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2017, 04:07:35 am by Smokin Joe »
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis