There are some things I never really wanted to think about. Like the French president Nicolas Sarkozy' s poignees d'amour. That is, the love handles around his middle.
Ewww!
Well apparently the editors at Paris Match gave them a lot of thought ... and decided neither they nor the world should see them. And thus began the saga of L'Affair des Poignees d'Amour.
It all began a few miles north of here, up on Lake Winnipesaukee. The French president was on vacation. News photographers were making images of him. One of these images was made by Neal Hamberg - who alert CCTC members might remember as the guest instructor for last year's Jr Tech Digital Photojournalism workshop. He was working for Reuters, a news agency that distributes work around the world. Many publications will receive access to the same Reuters photos.
Our friend Neal made a really nice image. Sarkozy was paddling a nice green canoe. The water was blue, sunlight filled the scene, and Sarkozy wore the summer lake uniform of shorts and no shirt.
Many publications ran this image, including Paris Match. Which is part of a large publishing group owned by businessman - and Sarkozy buddy -- Arnaud Lagardère. Someone somewhere in the weekly magazine decided the little rolls around the president's middle didn't quite present the right image. And, with a couple of quick clicks, deleted them.
Well, according to a statement released by Paris Match to the BBC, it was more like with the "wave of the magic wand." As in, the Adobe Photoshop magic wand, not the Harry Potter variety, or at least that would be the assumption those of us who work with publishing technology are making!
Poof, the president looked trim and fit. And the photo appeared in a large two-page double-truck image. Uhm, did I mention Reuters photos are used by many publications? And that it was just a matter of a very very short time before rival publication L'Express was pointing out the digital diet the president was on.
Today, a Google search on "Sarkozy love handle" produces about 174,000 results. The blogs are having a field day. The media trade media are having a field day. The gossip media are having a field day. The photographers suddenly found themselves the subject of the news instead of recorders of the news. And the question of "just because we can ... should we?" was again in the news.
Because that is the real issue behind all of this - we use technology to capture a moment. We use it to reproduce and distribute that moment. We've always been able to "change" reality but it is so darn easy to do it digitally that we often skip the debate over whether we really should. There's no time to reflect when with a two-second click or swipe of the magic wand the deed is done.
CCTC member Andrew Newman, a nationally known graphic designer as well as JrTech's Photoshop instructor, recently sent along a link to a presentation from this year's SIGGRAPH. SIGGRAPH is the event at which research into the use and application of graphic technology is presented. A researcher named Ariel Shamir presented work on "Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing." Which was very cool. And very scary.
Basically, he has created algorithms for defining sections of an image that can be condensed or removed altogether when an image is being dynamically resized. A human defines which portions of the image are expendable.
So, for example, there might be a group of five people standing in a row. You, the person preparing the image for placement in a web publication, might decide that the second person from the left isn't really relevant to the accompanying text. You define that person as expendable. If the person viewing the page resizes the page to make it smaller, the image will reform to fit the smaller size. It won't shrink proportionally - instead, the expendable elements will be either condensed or deleted.
Like I said, this is really fascinating to watch. But ... but ...
It all brings us back to a really important element of technology: the ethical decisions behind how we use it. And that key question we all need to ask ourselves: Just because we can, does that mean we should?
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