Take A Second Look

Via The Huffington Post, I stumbled across a pretty fantastic concept for a website. Some of the posts aren't as exciting as others, but I am quite confident that many of my readers would feel the same way about GZ. Photoshop Disasters is exactly what you would expect from the name. Essentially, they show you when the art of photoshopping goes bad. And when they find a "fail" they find it big time. Take a look at this Louis Vuitton Ad....

Spot anything wrong with this picture? I feel at this point, not only to fill up space to avoid you from seeing the next picture and immediately knowing the answer, we should point out the positives in this photo. Christy Turlington, Karen Elson, and Natalia Vodianova look absolutely stunning in perfectly styled photo campaign. My only complaint would be that the handbags are all held exactly the same way and then there is a random extra handbag in the back corner...perfectly "thrown" at just the right angle for the camera lens to pick up its most important attributes. And then there is the stiffness of the models. The way in which they seem just a little too perfect in the posture? It just doesn't seem real. You know....the more I talk about this photo...the less I really like it. The more you examine each element, the less it really seems to work. Of course the models look gorgeous, but with these three they would look fantastic walking down Canal Street wearing a black plastic bag and no make-up. And of course the clothes are stunning...and the colors are very pleasing to the eye, but the truth is, nothing in this picture is really working for me when I really break it all down. But back to photoshop. The real "art" in discovering flaws in photoshop is that we see get to prove that what you see on the glossy pages in our favorite publications, is not always reality. It makes those of us that are a little less than perfect, feel that perhaps everyone really does have their flaws. So while photoshop provides readers with unrealistic and quite frankly, unachievable goals for the real world (mocking us all the way to the bank). We find some comfort and humor when we find their fatal mistakes...proving that there is a little less than what meets the eye. Whether its a slightly misplaced head on a non-matching bod, or a hand that has been painted into something that more closely resembles the appendage of a velociraptor, there is something about finding these mistakes that gives us a sigh of relief. They aren't perfect. And we have all seen the utterly amazing Dove campaigns that showcase the abilities of photoshop and the transformations that so easily take place. It is astounding the amount of money that is poured into taking a beautiful shot of a beautiful woman and making her look plastic. I appreciate the touch ups. Make the skin smoother. Hide a bruise or an ill-placed mole. But let's not completely alter a photograph. And if we do, let's make sure it is done right. I wonder how much the money was wasted on the mismatched reflections in what was bound to be a highly expensive LV Campaign...