Dabbling in some light editing of your pics is pretty standard practice.
Adding some brightness, giving the teeth a slight whiten and throwing a Valencia filter over the top isn’t really a punishable crime.
But some people take photo editing to a whole new, supernatural level. And when they do, people feel slighted.
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London-born travel blogger, Amelia Liana, recently learnt that you can only take photo editing so far before people start calling bewshit.
The 26-year-old posted a now-deleted picture of herself gazing out across the Manhattan skyline from the Rockefeller Centre.
She accompanied the truly inspirational picture with a simple yet informative caption: “What a welcome to NYC #TopOfTheRock”.
However, eager followers notice a lil’ something something was missing from the iconic New York City skyline. As this comparison pic shows, the World Trade Centre building is nowhere to be seen in Liana’s pic:
This omission sparked curiosity amongst some of Liana’s geographically-savvy followers.
After a short digital hunt, they noticed similar discrepancies in her pictures.
In one in front of the Taj Mahal, the scaffolding that has been there since 2008 has completely disappeared. In another, Liana defies the law of physics as she’s pictured perched atop a bed floating on top of the London skyline:
That’s some Aladdin shit if I ever saw it.
In her defence, Liana has hit back at the criticism by writing a post explaining her editing processes.
Titled “My Image Principles“, Liana reasons that she edits her pics to uphold aesthetics.
“I feel a great bond with you, my followers,” she writes, referring to her 495,000 strong audience.“And I would never wish to deceive you, and so I have established these principles and shared them with you, so that you understand that I am striving for authenticity as well as giving you imagery that is stylish, progressive and inspiring.”
She goes on to write out a 6-point strong list of principles, not dissimilar to the time God inscribed his laws in the tablets of stone.
“I’m always striving to find new techniques to make my imagery progressive and aesthetically pleasing representations of an authentic scene,” she explains in one point.”
In another, she touches on retouching, again referring to the almighty #aesthetic we all fall victim to.
“I like to develop my skills and may use all available techniques to enhance, sharpen or smarten my images. This may include improving the light, tidying the background and other enrichments, but always in a way that is representative to the true setting and always in a way that reflects my aesthetic. “
To be fair, editing the background of beautiful pics destined for an inspo blog, all in an effort to make things look more beautiful, really shouldn’t matter.
I mean, if you took a pic this good and saw some old codger licking the life outta a gelato in the background, you’d probably edit him out too.
Source: Time.
Photo: @amelialiana / Instagram / Getty.
