The Narrative Image

I saw the comment in a social media forum - a private group for hikers. I was yet unaware that the group was a loose confederation of fairly opinionated if not quite warring factions. The comment seemed innocent enough. It was a veiled plea to start a civil debate about editing waterfalls. The gist of it was this, “...the smooth water effect looks very unnatural. Almost looks like it’s trying to trick folks who don’t have the opportunity to go and see waterfalls themselves.” As the post began to generate more and more comments, the ambiguity of “Almost looks like…” slowly became more explicit as in “...it is intentionally deceiving people who have not seen the waterfall... Just curious to hear if anyone feels the same way.” The “smooth water effect” refers to the silky, blurred look that happens to moving water in long-exposure photographs. Fig. 1   Abiqua Falls with perhaps a tad too much 'Silky Water Effect'. s.dietz © 2019 At about a hundred comments into the...