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Cool Dove Commercial & Imaging USA Info

CATEGORIES: Living In Layers | RC | January 04, 2008

A couple of nights ago, I was channel flipping and I came across ‘America’s Next Top Model’. I was watching the competition and the host wound up saying something that kind of stuck in my head. I don’t really remember the comment verbatim, but it was something along the lines of, “You have to remember that what we are selling is the -perception- of what you look like.” Now, I know that day in and day out, I spend a lot of time touching things up in Photoshop, but to hear it so plainly spoken was kind of weird for me. We are in the business that -at times- sells an illusion of reality.

That feeling was compounded when my friend Al sent me this YouTube link of a Dove commercial. It shows a timelapse movie of a person who is getting retouched during a photo shoot, and what a final product looks like. Definitely worth a look. Check it out here. Something worth pondering..

On another note, this weekend is the great meeting of all things photography – the Imaging USA Expo. A lot of us will be there at the Kelby Training booth, giving classes on Photoshop techniques. I will be giving some classes on taking things from Photoshop to the web. We sure hope that you stop on by. Have a great Friday everyone!

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Visitor Comments »

That’s always been how I’ve seen the art of re-touching, the trick being to ‘extend’ reality in a favourable way by keeping the basis of the original image intact.

For a more extreme version of the Dove ad see this – http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PduJAw5oxIg

Mark

Comment by Mark Leach | January 4, 2008 @ 7:30 am

Since each of us sees the world around us filtered by our own individual physical & cerebral limitations, “reality” in truth, IS perception, and therefore, different for each of us.

Which explains, for example, the need for PMS color codes.

Comment by Veronica Phillips | January 4, 2008 @ 2:42 pm

RC, I saw that same episode and was strangely thinking the same thing, that while the original concept of photography was to capture the scene in it’s original, unaltered form, today we are more interested in what that unaltered scene ‘could’ be. Very insightful.

BTW – how have you been Brother? Send me a note and we can catch up.

Tim White F’93

Comment by Timothy White | January 6, 2008 @ 9:26 pm

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