Angry in the Great White North

From the Dan Report via Jason Cherniak, a discussion of these two photos.

Here's the original from Gerard Kennedy's website (this copy is downsampled to reduce download time):

And the version that appeared on the Conservative Party website:

Jason notes:

So while in the original, the beers are only part of the environment, in the Conservative picture the beers become a dominant feature. You'll also notice that the editor of the photo even made the effort to remove what appears to be a hand from behind the red labeled beer bottle and moved it over to the left a little.

Anyways, not a big deal, just thought it was kind of interesting. Are the Conservatives actually trying to associate the Liberals and or Gerard Kennedy with booze and bad decision making?

Here's another explanation. The original photo includes that fellow to Kennedy's right attempting some sort of psychic attack on the candidate (or just enthralled with Liberal Party policy discussions...nah). In the second image, the cropping would make that guy would become a seriously large component of the photo. So the decision was made to take out everything from Gerard Kennedy. Everything in front -- the beer bottles, the plate, the crumpled napkin, the decorative candle, the tablecloth, the hand in the front of the frame on the left -- remains in focus. Everything behind is blurred out.

If you tried to take out the beer bottles, you'd have these mysterious blobs in front, vaguely shaped like beer bottles. Not much help. You'd then have to take out everything else in front on Kennedy, and soon Kennedy would be floating in a multi-coloured mist.

Jason makes another point:

And do they really have permission to use and edit it in the first place?

Maybe they didn't get permission. But then I think it's a pretty good picture of Kennedy. Very flattering -- he isn't caught in a half-blink, his hand is in motion but not in a goofy way, he seems to focused and determined. If the Conservatives really wanted Kennedy to look bad, you'd think they wouldn't try to start with one of Kennedy's own official pictures. Obviously those have been selected because they look good.

No, the Conservatives would send out an army of paparazzi wannabees with order to get a picture of Kennedy sneezing or burping or something. But then no major political party in Canada would engage in that sort of silliness.

Update: There is also the consideration of protecting the CPC against litigation. In other words, the CPC had to remove the people in the background. So it wasn't about highlighting beer, but hiding faces.

[Update: The beer bottle moved! Bring down the goverment!]