Hello all,
OP here... Do you people claiming this smacks of desperation, have
any idea how easy it is to slant opinions one way or another using visual means?? Here is another example, this time from a so called "professional" photographer... At least she admits her bias, unlike ABC
Lib Photographer Admits Making McCain Look Sinister for Mag Cover
By Noel Sheppard (
Bio |
Archive)
September 13, 2008 - 17:54 ET
Media watchers are well-aware that it's not only words that can be used to spread propaganda, but oftentimes it's the pictures involved in the articles.
For months, people around the country have been noticing the always flattering photos of Barack Obama, and, by contrast, pictures that make John McCain either look older than what he is, or sickly...or even worse.
On Friday, the photography website PDNPulse published a virtual
exposé about a professional photographer that admitted taking an intentionally diabolical looking picture of McCain that she hoped would be on the cover of October's Atlantic magazine (emphasis added throughout, photo courtesy The Atlantic, h/t NB reader Drew Hallowell):
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When
The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she rubbed her hands with glee.
She delivered the image the magazine asked fora shot that makes the Republican presidential nominee look heroic. Greenberg is well known for her
highly retouched images of bears and crying babies.
But she didnt bother to do much retouching on her McCain images. I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad, she says.
However, that's not the picture Greenberg hoped the Atlantic would use:
After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to please come over here for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. Thats what he thought he was being lit by, Greenberg says. But that wasnt firing.
What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. He had no idea he was being lit from below, Greenberg says. And his handlers didnt seem to notice it either. I guess theyre not very sophisticated, she adds.
Here's the picture she wanted The Atlantic to use (courtesy PDNPulse):
Fortunately, they didn't. However, Greenberg, given her known political leanings, thinks it was wrong for The Atlantic to use her for this assignment:
I am a pretty hard core Democrat. Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.
Just how irresponsible? Well, if you go to Greenberg's website, which she calls "
The Manipulator," and continue to hit your refresh icon, you'll see some truly disturbing pictures of McCain, along with some truly disturbing captions.
These include one that says, "I Called My Wife A C*** In Front Of Reporters," and another that was discussed in the PDNPulse piece:
he goes on to explain that shes thought about replacing McCains mouth with bloody shark teeth and displaying the image on a billboard with the message that the candidate is a bloodthirsty war monger.
Keep on hitting refresh at the front page of her website, and that picture will appear.
And this is the woman The Atlantic hired to take a picture of McCain for the cover of its October issue.
Isn't that special?
*****Update: NBer CyberNorris has found a website that has Greenberg's disgraceful McCain pictures.
*******************************
These images are, to any reasonably decent person, simply political pornography. There's just no other way to parse them.
To say Ms. Greenberg's use of this material in this way is "unprofessional" and does the subject (John McCain) and the client (The Atlantic Monthly) a disservice is to vastly understate the case. Not only has Ms. Greenberg exposed The Atlantic to charges of bias it may well have not intended, it turns out she was engaged in dealing with Senator McCain falsely as well. She has, indeed, bragged about it to PDNPulse, a professional photographers' journal. Here, in her own words, are what she did:When The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she rubbed her hands with glee..... After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to please come over here for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. Thats what he thought he was being lit by, Greenberg says. But that wasnt firing.
What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. He had no idea he was being lit from below, Greenberg says. And his handlers didnt seem to notice it either. I guess theyre not very sophisticated, she adds -
PDNPulse: How Jill Greenberg Really Feels About John McCain
So what we see here is a candidate for President showing up at a photo-session for a cover shot for a magazine he knows is not going to give him an Obama-pass, but still making time for it. Waiting for him is the contracted representative of that magazine, Jill Greenberg, who has literally set a trap for him and then lures him into it. She mocks the McCain staff for not being "very sophisticated" about lighting when, in truth, the lighting used for a professional photo session is very complicated. There are umbrella lights, fill spots, and a raft of others being used at any given time.
I imagine that Ms. Greenberg was in full charm mode with Senator McCain at the same time she was executing her little partisan plot. Indeed, I am certain she was nothing other than sweetness and light to him. What she was doing was quite another thing, a vile thing. Simply put, it was betrayal for a cheap political frisson for her.
Then Greenberg extended the betrayal to her Client, The Atlantic. She either did not deliver all the images of the shoot to the client or she began to manipulate them for her own uses as seen above. In this digital age, she probably ftp'd the images to The Atlantic, kept the originals on her own system, and then made the cheap and disgusting photoshops seen above.
I'm not sure how the art director of The Atlantic, Jason Treat, feels about this, even though I have written him requesting a reply. Still, during the years that I hired and worked with illustrative photographers, product photographers, news photographers, and fashion photographers in London and New York City, my art directors and myself always got all the film to review. Depending on the contract, the film would or would not go back to the photographer. When digital came it, it was always understood that the out-takes or images we commissioned and paid for would be kept confidential by the photographer -- as specified in the rights agreement. At the very least, we would have exclusive use of them for a considerable period of time.
One thing I do know is that if I, or any other editor or art director, ever caught a photographer using images held back for secondary profit outside of the contract, or using images in a way that would undercut our publication, we would pull that photographer's card out of the assignment rolodex. Not only that we would make it out business to tell other editors and art directors at other publications that such a photographer was never to be trusted again.
Ms. Greenberg may well have her opinions and is welcome to them. But to use the offices, reputation, and money of The Atlantic Monthly to fool and ridicule a United States Senator and candidate for President goes well beyond unprofessional conduct and into the area of fraud.
Elsewhere in the PDN article, Ms. Greenberg giggles, "I want to stir stuff up, but not to the point where I get audited if he becomes president. Again we see the thin slime that passes for courage and conviction among those of Ms. Greenberg's ilk -- "I'dlike to be edgy and transgressive, I just don't want there to be any consequences for me."
Relax, Ms. Greenberg, and munch your tofu or carpet in complete security. There is no lamp post in your future. Should McCain be elected I am positive he won't take the time or use his power to audit Ms. Greenberg. That, as well as the dishonorable Ms. Greenberg herself, are things too far beneath Senator McCain for him to even notice.
But perhaps, if Ms. Greenberg's fraud were to become widely known in the advertising and publishing communities, it could well be the case that Ms. Greenberg has a lot less income to audit in the coming years.
You may recall that last week US Weekly played fast and loose with a Sarah Palin cover and it ended up costing that magazine around 10,000 subscribers as the cancellations flowed in. The Atlantic starts with a much smaller subscriber base than US Weekly and an almost non-existent news stand sale. May both shrink accordingly and increase the $5 million per year loss it is currently running. In addition, it might be a good thing if advertisers and media buyers were alerted to this episode. I'm going to do my share.
You see, I no longer write to editors about these frauds and outrages, I write to the advertisers. You should too.
This so called "professional" shows exactly who she backs in the upcoming election... Another shining example from the left
KennyD
