It's not your eyes playing tricks on you

Seeing is not always believing. Almost every image you and I encounter everyday whether it be via the news, advertisement, or entertainment source is purposefully used to evoke some sort of reaction. Although we like to believe our trusted sources use authentic imagery to achieve these responses from us, unfortunately the practice of photo manipulation has been going on about as long as photography has. The following are just a few examples of some of the more ridiculous manipulations designed to "trick" you into believing something else is going on.

In order to demonstrate the "diversity" found at The University of Wisconsin at Madison, school officials had the original photograph(right) doctored by inserting a black student into the crowd. Although the Senior, Diallo Shabazz, really was a student there, he was not present when the photograph was taken.

After O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murder of his wife in 1994, news publications were displaying his mugshot everywhere. Time magazine decided to adjust the color saturation and burn the corners of the image. The finished product gave Simpson a darker more sinister look than the original mugshot which Newsweek used as their cover.

In 2008 Iran announced that it had successfully fired missiles with a 1,200 mile range. Many news organizations used the first image until the second image showing only three missiles fired began to circulate around the internet. Apparently the IRG changed the photo in order to hide the fact that one of the missiles did not fire.

This is perhaps the first ever faked photograph and dates back to the 1840's. The man in the picture, Hippolyte Bayard, was upset over the fact that Louis Daguerre's photographic process had beaten his own known as direct positive printing. Bayard decided to fake his own suicide and attached a note to the photograph stating that he had drowned himself. It's just a reminder that people have been using photograph manipulation for their own agendas since the very beginning.