Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump, speaks on the front of the stage while the back seats remain empty at an event sponsored by the Greater Charleston Business Alliance and the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce at the Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston, S.C., Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Mic Smith)
You often read about the dishonest manipulation of photographs using Photoshop and other such tools. However, it’s quite easy to change the meaning of the photograph just by your choice of framing. Without altering the photograph at all you completely change the impression created. Witness the two photographs in this post.
The one above seems to show Donald Trump speaking to a half empty room while the one below, more tightly framed, seems to show a packed house. They’re both taken by the same photographer at the same event, but the feeling conveyed is quite different. Mr. Trump was angry about what he considered to be a dishonest depiction saying in the Daily Mail:
‘The photographer is a f***ing thief,’ an exasperated Trump boomed in a telephone interview, referring to the Associated Press photojournalist who shot the initial picture.
‘Tell them they’re a fraud, whoever took it. I just got killed on that thing, and it was just really unfair. It’s godd**n unfair.’‘The point is that everybody from the back rushed to the front. And the people who put out the pictures knew it.,’ Trump charged.
‘And they said, “Oh, look! The back 25 per cent [is empty]”.’
When I first read Mr. Trump’s comments I thought it was just “The Donald” trying to put a positive spin on a negative situation. However, even though I’m not a HUGE fan of Mr. Trump I think he may have a point here. In the second picture you clearly see a large number of people between those seated and the podium. They must have come from somewhere. Are there enough of them to fill all those empty seats – I don’t know? I’ll leave that to you to decide.
Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump, speaks at an event sponsored by the Greater Charleston Business Alliance and the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce at the Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston, S.C., Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Mic Smith).