#Exposed: Filtering Photos in a Digital Society
Adding a filter offers a new perspective, a new attribute, a transformation that can affect how someone perceives an image. Sometimes, adding a filter can also make your purple sweater the most vibrant material in the world.
That’s me, on both the left and the right. I ‘exposed’ my before and after Instagram pictures as a message, demonstrating the power of technology and the levels of manipulation and exercise that can go into editing a photo for publication. I deleted an entire electrical POLE to fulfill a golden hour aesthetic! The lengths some editors can go to in an effort to achieve the perfect image may astound you.
Photographically, filters provide a unique experience where we can manipulate our appearances and how we choose to be seen in the digital sphere. Filters can be comforting, reassuring safety blankets that reinforce idealism and beautiful perfection, despite engaging in some aspects of falsity. We grow attached to our favourite lenses, making adjustments and seeing ourselves the way we want others to see us, not necessarily for who we truly are.
According to Rettberg (2014) …
Selfies can be raw and revealing. They can feel too authentic, too honest. Perhaps running them through a filter to boost the colours, overexpose the skin to hide its imperfections or give them a retro tinge is sometimes the only way we can bear to share these images of ourselves” (27).
The desire to post online versus the desire to perform online distances ourselves from our reality and connects us to our technology. We begin to rely on representing ourselves in ways that support virtual society and altered visions rather than embracing the truth.
In my experience on Instagram, I have a meticulous process in which I follow.
Add a filter. Edit exposure. Play with contrasts and saturations. Warm the photo, cool it down. Brighten areas, darken others. Remove impurities. Whiten teeth. Sharpen lines, blur some out. The list continues until I’ve finished playing and perfecting, satisfied with how I’ve decided to look on Instagram for the day.
And are these modifications used to boost self-confidence? Totally. Are these photo editing norms culturally necessary, societally imposed to further encourage a lack of self-confidence and the need to invest in more applications where we ‘heal’ our images and spend money? Depends who you’re asking.
Professional photographers and amateur selfie enthusiasts alike are beginning to hold these same levels of technological power, gaining access to editing softwares that influence the outcome of images through a variety of tools. The availability and mass promotion of cellphone apps like Facetune, Perfect365 and Retouch make filtering photos easy, begging the question to consumers, “why won’t you edit your photos to look perfect? You have everything you need right here.”
Ethically, when using filters it’s necessary to recognize the ethic of care. Do you care about YOU and does the application of filters elevate YOU.
Ask yourself, does adding this filter make me feel good? Does it still preserve the real me and enhance my features, not limit my existing perfections? Does it align with my ideas of beauty and support me in a positive way? Does this filter motivate me and give me confidence in posting photos and will it help me to one day post a photo without the constraints of major editing? Do I want to post this image and present myself in this light? You decide, you’re only a few clicks away.
