Photoshop evidence

Something fishy?

Strahan: We’re going out to have lunch on the yacht.

Parris: Which yacht?

Strahan: I have a picture of it. Here. See. The boat is named "White Rabbit".

Parris: You photoshopped it. You added the name White Rabbit to the photograph.

Strahan: Can you prove it?

____________

Voice-over

The name has been carefully blended into the side of the boat.

But Parris, with a sharp eye for details, has discovered the remains of a text box.

Microsoft Word has such a function for typing words in on top of an image.

Job interview group photo

What’s this lineup?

Henri: Men and women in black. Holding small white boards. Dressed for job interviews.

Geoffrey: Looks a bit expressionless. Needs a little post-production image enhancement.

Henri: What are you doing?

Geoffrey: There. Looks better as an oil color.

Henri: It’s totally different. Can’t see what they’re doing or who they are.

Geoffrey: Now the picture has passion.

_________

Voice-over

Henri likes his pictures just as they come out of the camera. Old school. 

Geoffrey likes to play around post-production with the images. Photoshop them. Post-modern.

...

Sidecar of Unreality: Photograph with Magical Metadata

Metadata

Deep in Otago, peut être …

Simon: Grand panorama.

Essenes: Magical scene. But magic is an illusion.

Simon: It’s an ad of course.

Essenes: Of course. And is therefore quite unreal. That fancy luggage in the sidecar is in for a good wetting.

Simon: This is a good story. The clouds recede to reveal azure skies.

Essenes: Or it may rain. In some stories, the rain deepens the magic.

_________

Voice-over

The reality is that photographers are more likely to cart their gear round in a van.

The scene may even be a Photoshop job.

But this is less romantic than a tale of traversing a mountain pass by motorcycle and sidecar to discover a gothic landscape.

It is a photograph with magical metadata.

...

On FaceBook everyone knows you're a cat

Sketch of a General Cat    

Jerry: You Photoshopped your photo into a sketch?
Tom: What do you think?
Jerry: You’ve gone from being You The Cat to being merely a Generic Cat.
Tom: I needed a new avatar. I stuck with being a cat because, in the end, on FaceBook, everyone knows you are a cat.
Jerry: You got that from somewhere.
Tom: Maybe. Who cares? Everything these days is a derivative. A mixture. A mashup. OK, so the structure came from somewhere but the words are mine.

____________
Voice-over     
The deep structure generates a variety of sentences:

Location + Entity + Verb + Personal reference + Copula + Entity

On the internet + nobody + knows + you + are + a dog

On FaceBook + everyone + knows + you + are + a cat

Look forward to more quotations like this sheep in wolf’s clothing!

Chomsky might agree the surface structure is creative. A little.

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