What is airbrushing?
Are male “models” in men’s fitness magazines airbrushed? (That is, is what they’re showing the real thing or modified from it?)
WRS
Isn’t that where the photos are manipulated to remove any suggestion of wrinkles, blemishes etc?
I imagine so. Fitness magazines (male or female) would want their models to appear as perfect as possible.
Wanna see an example of airbrushing?
(Or at least the modern digitial equivalent. There was a time when actual airburshes were used)
Look at this.
You don’t even need an airbrush. Check the pics over here for an example of what lighting and posing can do.
Man, that just weirded me out a bit. I need to go take a walk.
How’d he get the abs? I can see everything else, but from that gut to the abs is pretty interesting. At least I can look better when I’m swimming! Sure does make you wonder about those pictures they show on the TV now.
I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say it had to do with the lighting. Additionally, he seems to be sucking in his gut and thrusting his chest forward in the pictures where his upper abs are visible, and that could make them more prominent.
There is actually a painting tool called an airbrush. It is used by painters and graphic designers. It works by projecting a controlled and very fine jet of air across a nozzle containing paint or pigment. It allows for very fine, gradual transitions from one shade to another, and for very fine blending of shades and tones.
These days, software which makes it possible to alter digital images (such as Photoshop) usually includes an ‘airbrush’ tool which can achieve similar effects.
As for images in magazines, without accurate inside information from the people preparing the artwork for the mag you can’t say for sure to what extent, if any, a given image has been manipulated or enhanced. However, it is very common practice to enhance images for cosmetic purposes, and nobody in the publishing or advertising trade regards it as at all ethically suspect to do so. In certain kinds of magazines and adverts, the whole point of the photo session is to produce the most appealing image, and so as well as hiring the best model, best stylist, best photographer they can, why not ‘tidy up’ the end result digitally? It all goes towards the same purpose.
Note that this is the sentiment that usually applies to any published image where there is an obvious (and understood) intention to produce a cosmetically attractive result, be it in a fitness magazine, fashion advert or wherever. A very different standard applies to *news * photographs where (ostensibly) there is a commitment to objective and factually accurate reportage and documentation, and tampering with images for any reason is generally considered a very bad thing to do, contrary to journalistic principles, and people caught doing it can face seirous consequences.
I read an interview with one of the models for Men’s Fitness magazine in which he described the process leading up to the photo shoot. As I remember, it involved several months of dedicated training for hours each day and a very strict diet in the month or two prior to the photo shoot. This was for someone already in very good shape, but I gather was necessary to get the look desirable for the magazine cover.
So even if the cover photo wasn’t retouched, no normal person could expect to look like that.
The pose makes a huge difference. I’ve linked to pictures of myself before where it looks like I have huge arms and a small waist. It’s mostly because I know how to do a quarter-turn towards the camera that makes my chest look bigger and my hips and waist smaller.
For another example of deceptive posing and airbrushing, check out this article about Jamie Lee Curtis. She did a magazine spread where she insisted they show her without make-up and in bad lighting and, wow, it makes a difference.
I was watching that horrific trainwreck of an MTV show “I want a Famous Face” and I was saddened by the girl that wanted to look like Tiffany Amber Thiessen. She wanted to look like touched up fashion photos of T.A.T.
She spent $13,000 to look like a digital, impossible in real life image.
Whenever I see pictures of beautiful people going about daily things, I’m suprised at how human they look. On the Miss America pageants when they show contestants doing something normal during the day, wearing jeans and T-shirts, they look prettier than average, but still human enough to be someone you’d see on the bus.
Once I got an E-mail of awful pictures of celebrities. Some weren’t wearing make-up, some were wrinkly, etc. They sure looked different!
Lighting is a good way to make models look better if they have wrinkles or blemishes. Even lighting makes people look a lot better than, say, holding a flashlight up to their face in the dark while telling ghost stories.
Soft-focus lenses are also good to give the photo a soft look while making blemishes/wrinkles less noticeable.
But with Photoshop it’s easy to make almost anything look better. I remember once I saw something about how they altered Mariah Carey on the “Rainbow” cover. Her legs were a lot thinner when they were done with her!
The cover model look, among other things, is achieved through hard work, good genes, a healthy diet, proper clothing and poses, a skilled photographer, good lighting, sunbeds, amphetamines, thyroid medication, diuretics, liposuction, airbrushing and body dysmorphic disorder. It sure beats eating some of the crappy recipes Gregg Avedon purports to eat in “Men’s Health”.
sigh This is somewhat depressing. Here I thought it would be possible to become one of those incredibly irresistable men’s fitness magazine models. (I was so going to subscribe to one just because of its cover models. drool)
I was aware airbrushing and other manipulation of pictures occured, but I had no idea the changes were so radical. I am shocked, if not slightly outraged at this deception.
WRS