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By Charles S. Johnson, Jr.
We are bombarded with images from television, computer screens, newspapers, and magazines.  There are advertisements, illustrations for news stories, snapshots from social media, and on and on.  From time to time there are news stories expressing outrage about manipulated photographs in advertisements and, heaven forbid, enhanced photos in news stories.  There are rants about “fake” photographs, and prestigious publications such as the New York Times proclaim their purity.  In the nytco web site 1 we find, “Images in our pages that purport to depict reality must be genuine in every way.”
Does this make any sense?  Is there such a thing as a fake painting, a fake magazine article, a fake television show?  I think there are fakes, but to me these are things that are meant to deceive, in other words, things that are not what they claim to be.  The problem with photographs is the out-of-date notion that...

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Charles S. Johnson, Jr.
Charles S. Johnson, Jr.
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Charles S. Johnson, Jr. received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from MIT. He taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Yale University, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he is now Professor Emeritus. He has published approximately 150 papers on magnetic resonance and light scattering as well as books on laser light scattering and quantum mechanics. His interest in photography goes back to the 1950's; however, for many years his career in science left little time for serious photography. Now he is an avid nature photographer, and he blogs about photography here. In addition, he is making use of his scientific background to research and write about the physical and psychological bases of photography. His recent book, Science for the Curious Photographer, 2nd Ed, includes discussions of light and optics, sensors, factors that determine image quality, and the human visual system.
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