What We Learned From "The Dress" - A Yearbook Teacher's Point of View

"The Dress" has had its fifteen minutes of fame (extended a bit by the snow day effect) and is about to go away.  Before it does, I would like to take a minute to reflect on what it can teach us about pictures.

There are ubiquitous phrases in the world that are wrong despite their massive use.  "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" might make you feel better when you are going through a hard time, but it just isn't true.  One of the most meaningless phrases is "Pictures Don't Lie."  I can tell you a a person who takes 20 thousand pictures a year that pictures lie all the time.  I'm not even talking about photoshopped, airbrushed, intentionally manipulate pictures; I'm talking about the pictures you snap and post to instragram without touching them.

The picture of the cute bird sitting in a tree in your yard makes it seem like you live in a Disney movie (or at least in a country chalet somewhere).  You don't.  What is out of frame in that shot?  Is it the trash can or the car?  I have students who will tell me that I shouldn't come and take pictures at a certain game because they are going to lose that one.  Are the shots I take of the batter at the plate really going to look different if they are winning?  Not unless I include the scoreboard in the shot, which is hard to do with it being on the other side of the field.  When I take yearbook pictures, I don't include the onfield injury, the student who is crying, or the mom who just had to dress up like a princess too because she made the kindergarten event about her.  Therefore, what you choose to include or exclude from a picture can make the picture lie.  Despite this, I still here "Pictures don't lie" about twenty times a year.

Enter "The Dress."  Everyone who viewed this picture was looking at the same thing.  They were perceiving it differently, but they were all looking at the same thing.  If you want to know the science of why different people saw different colors, click this link (http://www.livescience.com/49980-dress-color-explainer.html).  My point is this.  If people looking at the same photo can't agree on what they are seeing, how can we expect to believe all pictures?  The next time there is a tabloid photo, a picture on the evening news, or a photo that went viral, remember The Dress.  Ask yourself if you are absolutely sure that picture is telling you the entire story before you snap to an instant opinion.