Johanna Faust, a mixed race Jew, prefers to publish pseudonymously. She is committed: first, to preventing war, ecological disaster, and nuclear apocalypse; last to not only fighting for personal privacy & the freedom of information, but, by representing herself as a soldier in that fight, to exhorting others to do the same. She is a poet, always. All these efforts find representation here: "ah, Mephistophelis" is so named after the last line of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, whose heretical success flouted the censor for a time.

What The Romney Nevada Event "REALLY" Looked Like


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UPDATE: 
There is a strong possibility, 
nay, probability, in my mind, Gentle Reader, 
that this image was manipulated 
quite by accident, 
despite what the impression thus given 
might profit the Romney campaign. 
Full details after the post; 
(I must confess I am still pleased with myself, 
beginner at photoshop that I am.


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Alternate titles:
  • "Turnabout Is Fair Play"
  • "Live By The Photoshop, Die By The Photoshop"

By now you may have heard of the Romney event at the Henderson Pavilion in Nevada, certain pics of which were thought, by our friends over at BuzzFeed, to have been photoshopped, or at the very least manipulated -- and that badly:

Read more of "Romney Campaign Exaggerates Size Of Nevada Event With Altered Image: At best, the official Romney Instagram account posted a really bad panorama" at BuzzFeed.com




First off, here is a (very) rough estimation of what the Romney event above looked like before the image was manipulated.



from Michael Shaw's article here.
The helpful guide on the leftt served as my template.



Now we have a few images from the event.  They are as state of the art and authentic as one can reasonably expect of satirical endeavors such as this, no? (Credit goes to Donnie Hoyle's You Suck At Photoshop, for teaching me that although I do, it needn't hold me back)...

















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UPDATE (part two): 

A  reader was kind enough to leave a comment that explained in detail the technological circumstances by which this accident would be, well, innocent.  From the comments (and thank you Anonymous 8:22 am):

Please do not take this as my being a supported of Romney, I am disgusted with both candidates, and will continue to be disgusted with most politicians for a long while. The image, if taken from instgagram leads me to believe all images were taken on a smart phone. I have done panorama shots on my phone before that looked similarly "jacked up". 2 doors, 3 arms, .etc, .etc... Again, not trying to knock your rant or anything, but there is a realistic possibility of just a simple panoramic stitching error.



Hints had been dropped elsewhere (Redditors, I am thinking of you), but unfortunately by those who assumed a certain familiarity with the technology. As I understand it, we are dealing with a not uncommon but unfortunate result of an attempt to use applications native to one's cell phone to stitch images stored upon that same phone into panoramic presentations.  This appears to be, under certain circumstances, (and of what these circumstances are I am as yet not fully conversant), ill advised, as it is likely to produce effects such as started all this.

In other words, not being familiar with the technology, I had had not nearly enough of a clue to realize that the entire concept of willful image manipulation was called into question.


A question remains: 
Why was an image stitched thus inadequately 
considered a fit representation, 
with no apology or disclaimer,  
in the first place?

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Be seeing you.