All that's Real then Contrived

I was first exposed to the process and rationale of altering photographs in 1994 when writing a feature article on a chef. The photographer assured me that the food photos would be crisp and vivid, better than the real thing! Frankly, I had that "duh" moment, when she told me food photos were routinely color enhanced because they didn't present well otherwise. OK, made sense; but, it had never occurred to me that the lush green salad with sparkling slices of grapefruit weren't the magic of Mother Nature. Flash forward to 2012, and enter the world of constantly changing photos and images. What's real? Common Sense Media's lesson "Retouching Reality," for grades 9-12, is a splendid exploration into the conceptualization, and creative and ethical issues involved in altering images. And because students have grown up in a world where photos are splashed all over the Internet and routinely photoshopped, there isn't a sense that original images have a sacred right to be preserved and protected. Nonetheless, seeing is believing. The activities in the lesson involve such activities as voting if a photo is real or fake, and altering a photo through a website linked to Flickr. It's a lesson that could be molded into any discipline, because photos drive perceptions, create opinions, cause an emotional reaction, even alter the course of history. Critically, it's a lesson that allows students to be front and center, either showcasing their own work and/or their opinions.