Pictures that say 1000 words

Pictures That Say 1000 Words

By Hal Brown

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Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Posting now on Mastodon - see right column there 

Background from InPixio, Hal Brown

Updated Dec. 19: 

As Elon Musk and Donald Trump compete for headlines with their self-defeating bizarre behavior I watch how editors decide to illustrate their stories. Today I found a opening page story for  Elon Musk Posts Twitter Poll Asking If He Should Step Down As CEO on HUFFPOST. It is no longer the top of the page story so you can't the it online the way I did.

It fits right in with the theme of the following story. Of all the photos of Musk they could have used they found one where his gaze was directed upward as if he was looking at the headline. For posterity, here it is:

Click above to enlarge

The symbolism of this above photo was lost when the story moved down the page because while his gave was up the title was under the much smaller photo. It happens to be to the left of another Musk article which happens to be about Mastodon which is the platform I now am active on.

Below is my original blog story:

This was the top story on the HUFFPOST website this morning linking to this article:

I don't know whether it was an actual photograph of was photoshopped and made into a dark silhouette. 

I did a Google Image search and found the photo was used several times before:

Click above to enlarge

It is credited to Justin Sullivan of Getty Images. It was used in this article among others:

Whether it was photoshopped or not I think the black background was added because most people who are photographed have a background behind them.

As I write this the top of the site article on HUFFPOST is about Trump's malevolent doppelgänger Elon Musk for this article. It isn't nearly as dramatic as the Trump illustration:

I would guess that the black background  was also added to replace whatever was in the background of the photograph to make it more dramatic but I can't prove it.

I would characterize the photo of Musk as not particularly flattering but not appearing as obnoxious as he does in some of the photos published of him.

When the Musk article was no longer the lead story and moved down the page this is the Photoshopped image HUFFPOST used which shows him as looking ominous:

A Google Image search shows the first photo being credited to Jim Watson of Getty Images. It has been used frequently:

For example, it was used to illustrate a New York Times June 9, 2022 article.

There are so many photos of Trump and Musk showing such a range of emotions for editors to choose from to illustrate articles. Editors do not decide which to use by accident. 

Generally the photos we see of people in the public eye come with some kind of copyright protection and there is a legal gray area about how they can be republished. On this blog I often use the amazing Photoshop manipulated images made by DonkeyHotey since they are free to use as long as you give him his well deserved credit.

I used two of them in this blog story:

I took the photo HUFFPOST used and with BeFunky made it look like this:

With InPixo I made this with Jan van Eyck's Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych from Wikipedia as a background.