Rob Pegoraro, a Washington Post technology columnist, has some words to say about how innovations in digital photography is making it increasingly easier to make pictures that look better than reality.
The author contends that some of the new digital cameras on the market today can automatically correct problems that used to take more time and more skill to accomplish. Basically, modern cameras have digital deception built into them.
We now have available to us automatic "portrait enhancers", "slimming modes," and "red-eye reducers." For Pegoraro, "This kind of photo fakery ..... also fits in with the overall evolution of digital cameras."
From a sociological perspective, contemporary culture -- one that seeks out ideal notions of beauty, compulsive perfectionism and an appetite for self-indulgence -- has created a demand for such feel-good contrivances. We are now capable of creating new likenesses that differ from reality. We can create and maintain resemblances that might makes us appear slimmer and younger may improve how we feel about ourselves, but in reality it's all about the smoke and mirrors of digital bits and bytes.