City of Toronto does crummy job inserting black guy into stock-art photo on official publication
Darren sez, "The City of Toronto apparently didn't think their ethnically-ambiguous stock photography was diverse enough. They did a poor job of adding a happy African-Canadian to the mix."
I'm divided on this. I think the real problem is that they couldn't find a piece of diverse stock art, and opted for a ham-fisted photoshop job rather than a more detailed search of their stock catalogs. I don't see anything wrong (and I do see plenty right!) with trying to find photos for government publications that reflect the ethnic makeup of the citizens the government serves. Toronto is a fantastically, famously diverse place, and it's good to see the city trying to reflect that. But they should do better than this!
"The policy doesn't say PhotoShop, the policy says 'show diversity' and that's of course what we try and do because we want all of our publications to reflect the community that we serve," explained Mr. Sack, who oversees city communications. "That's only fair. People should see themselves reflected in city services because it's everyone who uses them.""When you're publishing something with the deadlines and you don't have the right photo, the objective is to communicate the service," Mr. Sack said.
"We're in one of the most diverse cities in the world. I hope that doesn't pose a problem for anybody. Capturing that diversity is not difficult. That's been our general experience."
City digitally adds black guy to Fun Guide cover to make it more 'inclusive' (Thanks, Darren and everyone else who suggested this!)
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Whoa! That photo went from 0 to creepy in 3 seconds flat!
Yeah, that is kind of a weird look he's got on his face. That lady better watch her back.
Onion got there first.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38641
When I worked as a trainer with the Regional Bell Operating Companies as clients (Pacific Bell, Verizon, Bell South, etc.) we were not allowed to depict any thing human-like in the powerpoint slides we used. It was decided that it was impossible to include every ethnic type in each slide deck (to ensure no one was slighted), and even the stock powerpoint "ink blob people" were considered to be dangerous, since they resemble people, and since they are black, showing one scratching it's head could be taken as a slur against black workers...
Big Companies can be suprising at times...
Lobster - he's looking down her blouse - folow the eye line...
Anybody else think the first article title ("Learn to Swim... It's Worth A Try") is hilarious?
Hey, look at the fingertips just at the left of the image! If the guy's face is creepy, imagine his arm.
This just shows REALLY bad project management and planning. These people are paid to do this work and are clearly very bad at doing the 'diversity' bit. Someone needs to build up their images of anyone with a burqa, GLB etc.
As someone else rightly pointed out, they also PS'd the fingers of the woman and replaced them with the man's. He should be playing basketball with arms that long or taking part in a remake of ET.
I just think it's funny that the guy quoted in the article says "Capturing that diversity is not difficult." but they have to resort to photoshopping the diversity into their publications. If they've realized that their stock photography selection is lacking diversity, hire a photographer to correct it. Or do a CC search of Flickr.
And isn't the guy they replaced of the same color. Not dark enough?
#6/Krollspell.... I noticed the same thing. I'm impressed that they remembered to change the color of the fingertips. Nothing would scream photoshop like white fingers belonging to a black guy!
Life imitates The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38641
Black Guy Photoshopped In
December 6, 2000
AMES, IA–In the spirit of celebrating diversity at Iowa State University, a black guy was digitally added to the cover of the school's 2001 spring-semester course catalog, school officials announced Monday.
Another fine example of out of touch bureaucrats spewing catch phrases to appear like they know whats going on.
The fingers are hilarious.
Intent: A+
Execution: C
Art Department: Fail
I remember when this happened at my alma mater.
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20080703151521853
"In September 2000, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Idaho were embarrassed when they were forced to admit they had doctored promotional photographs to make their campuses look diverse, writes Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed. In both cases, non-white faces were added to real student photographs of all-white groups. Now a study of the viewbooks of hundreds of colleges and universities has found that more than 75% appear to over-represent black students."
timothy hutton, comments like that redeem you.
That's like something you'd see coming out of 4chan.
Has BoingBoing ever launched a meme -- this could be it -- sticking that guys face in everything.
hai guyz whutz goin on on this fun guide covr?
#9 JIMBUCK: What about black fingers belonging to a white woman?
At that point they should have photoshopped together all the people and turned it into some stylized patchwork quilt of people. It may have looked a little funky, but it would have been a bit less creepy.
So wait, let me get this straight..
Bad photoshop or not, you're all objecting to a BLACK GUY being photoshopped into a picture?
You can cry "tokenism" all you like, I cry "racism".
You can cry "let me get this straight" all you like, I cry "you're doing it wrong"
Has BoingBoing ever launched a meme
You're joking, right?
Toronto is very multicultural, or it was in 1979 when I first visited, so I assume it hasn't regressed. So how hard would have been to find a real mixed-race couple with real mixed-race children and photographed them?
Fingers = bizarre.
Fail.
Looks as if whomever was in charge had (maybe) a narrow vision and insisted on the concept of a "huddle", which is very specific to satisfy with only stock photography.
Feel free to file this in "justification for appropriately paying an appropriate creative service provider".
CReeP...EEEE!
It took me 5 seconds to find a similar photo, unaltered! What designer would pass that off for mass publication? Shameful!
Lets all celebrate fake diversity... )
And they didn't remove the background too well either. Look at the white glow on the hair and mouth of the kid on the left.
I think it's a pretty good job. The cut & paste artist was probably new.
i dont get it.. its not like it was a picture of a white family with blonde hair and blue eyes. its obviously an ethnic family which seems perfect for the cover. its over exposed so its hard to make out skin color and details, and i can't for the life of me tell what nationality the dad is, he could be white, black or latino..
so let me get it straight, they don't want to insult black people... so they do a horrible photoshop on the cover, because.. you know.. black people are too stupid to see an obviously shop job.
Ethnectomy: the substitution or altering of one race for another in a photograph by means of Photoshopping. Almost always a bad idea.
Years and years ago--before easy, online stock photography came along--I had to do this for an HR brochure. We could only find one picture that had the metaphoric theme we were looking for, and it was in no way diverse. So, to quote my HR manager at the time, "Can you change one of 'em?" I did. It was subtle enough that, according to everyone who reviewed it, you couldn't tell... and I still think it wasn't a great idea. But we couldn't afford the $6k it would have cost to set up and shoot a more diverse group doing the same thing.
In the case of this Toronto picture... it's just bad. C'mon... a 5 second search at stock.xchng:
http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=search&txt=huddle&w=1&x=0&y=0
yielded a couple decent, diverse shots of happy people enjoying their friendly proximity. It's not a really complex or specific shot. Somebody was either desperate or lazy.
There should *always* be a creative alternative to "bad."
MDH offered up:
Thanks, what about the stories I suggest that get "published" here, don't they add to my redemption?
Don't worry, I'll step in it soon enough and wipe out any positve balance I've earned with you I'm sure ;^)
The creepiest thing about that photo is the child with 80% of a head. And that's in both the photo with the white guy and the photo with the black guy.
This was actually a "The Onion" parody a few years back...
There was no need to actually replace him, and still maintain the effectiveness of showing the lame need for skin color diversity.
Could have used dodge/burn tools with specific midtones, highlights, shadows tweaks on the original guy, and then play with curves to get a decent final look that matches the rest of the ppl. He would have enhanced dark tones. The original guy already has some of the "ethnic" features that Toronto must have been seeking. No need to go overboard for nothing. He was just too fair in skin tone. If you wanted to get a little more professional looking results. You could also have duplicated the background and then added a mask to the rest of the picture which would have allowed you to do some color changes on only him, and then use the overlay's or softburn placements to enhance the final results.
These are only the most basic tools. There are at least a few other ways that could work with more skilled hands at Gimp/Photoshop or even Aviary.
All I can say is, hilarious.
Good thing they added a black guy to a picture of some Mexicans to reflect the diversity of a city that is predominantly European white, East Asian and South Asian.
The smacks of a non-designer trying to meddle with the affairs of the art department.
But the fundamental problem is the lack of subtlety by the people in charge. Clearly the photo has diversity--just not enough "colour" for their tastes.
This is pathetic.
Is this really where our society has devolved to? Are we so petrified of offending one person that we're willing to erase another?
Forcing diversity is as much of an abomination as forcing segregation.
This is just one of those jobs where you can't find what you need immediately and just improvise to get the job done. I've have plenty of occasions where deadlines trump the consideration about modifying an image to meet the clients needs. It's always nice to have a good original to work with but can be real time consuming to find sometimes.
The number of times I've had to ditch a good photo just because it was a bunch of just young, white people is maddening. Unless the photographer was actively avoiding 'diversity', a picture of reality is, well, a picture of reality.
We had to brief a group illustration for the cover of a brochure (thankfully no photo work) ... it really was like a f*ing political campaign. Balance of gender? Check. Balance of ethnicity? Check. Balance of age? Check. Balance of ability? Check (someone in a wheelchair). The end result was such an obviously manufactured reality, an actual photo would have been ridiculous. The cartoonish nature of the illustration at least gave it a caricture/symbolic feel.
The greatest irony is that the client uses its Scandinivian heritage as a marketing tool ...
I wonder if African companies photoshop in white people to their HR documents? ;)
Hire a photographer next time. Pay for it. Stop it with the crappy photoshop guy in the cubicle next to yours.