Since the dawn of Instagram, everyone seems to think they’re qualified to be a professional photographer.
But it takes a lot more than an iPhone, a sepia filter and some half-eaten avocado toast to be a real photographer, it takes actual skill and years of practice.
A lesson that one anonymous professional photographer probably learned when she gave Pam and Dave Zaring the retouched photos she took a year ago.
Be warned these photographs are beyond horrifying, they’re like something from a Lovecraftian nightmare or an episode of Doctor Who with a half decent budget:
So how did these hideous photos come about? Well, Pam explained on Facebook that she paid a photographer, who claimed to be a professional, $250 to take family photos.
Unfortunately, the photographer said that the shadows were bad and that she had never been taught how to retouch photos.
So the hideous blurry faced portraits are her attempt at removing the shadows.
Now I’m no expert at photoshop but to me, it looks like she’s cranked the smudge tool up to 1oo per cent strength and drawn a crude face over each face.
That or she’s invoked the power of an eldritch tome to create hideous skin clones but messed up the faces because they’re difficult to draw
The good news is though that Pam’s managed to maintain a good sense of humour about the whole thing saying she hadn’t laughed this hard in years.
While we’re not sure Pam would agree it seems to us that it was money well spent.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.