Jump and Bend

"Run and jump over her but please don't hurt her!" That one sentence was all the instruction I gave to Garrett before he jumped over back bending Jessica. In the photo it looks as if he is about to do just what I asked him not to but in reality he landed well beyond her. This very aspect is what I love most about photography. You can control what the viewer sees or even what they don't see.

There are numerous "levitation" photos on flickr where someone is laying or standing on an object that has been photoshopped out of the image to give the illusion that they are floating. If done well these can be truly amazing! I love looking at photos that have been manipulated into something that couldn't have normally existed beforehand. Photography has become an even more extensive form of creative expression with the birth of photoshop, lightroom, and the other various editing programs. These tools have opened an endless outlet for making imagination a "reality". This article reiterates a few things I mentioned and how Photoshop has become even as typical as having Microsoft Word and Power Point.

As we delve into an even richer technologically based society I wonder what truth will remain in our photos. Will everything be manipulated or skewed? Will we be able to believe anything we see as reality? In my photo above it seems as though the boy is about to crush the unsuspecting girl but we as the viewer know that he must be jumping over her and therefore accept what we see as reality. What if I had photoshopped the girl to be doing the back bend in the air above the boy. How would you realistically explain this? You couldn't. It would just be a fun image. I hope some of this made sense and maybe got you thinking about how reality in photos is changing with our culture. I'm not saying it's good or bad just a thought about the future.