Did Time Magazine Manipulate a Leading "Photo" in the Commemorative Issue?

Let me begin by saying that it pains me to raise this serious question as I love Time magazine, still do, and likely always will read Time with great interest.  The particular issue in question is dated February 2, 2009.  Perhaps I love reading Time so much that I pay too much attention while reading it such that I find one of the leading two-page spread photos to be questionable, and if it turns out to be true, this would be very much objectionable.  It appears the photo may have been doctored or photoshoped beyond acceptable journalism by using digital means.  (For the purpose of this writing, I am going to use the term "photoshop" loosely and as a verb.)  The picture in question is below. 

Photographers use the depth of field effect to create wonderful pictures.  In this case, the focus is clearly on President Obama with everything getting more and more out-of-focus the further away they are from President Obama.  It's a nice effect and a great picture.  This picture clearly intends to do that in the direction as shown below.

From a photography standpoint, things that are equal in distance to the photographer should be equally in focus in terms of the degree of clarity.  Let's pay attention to the cropped area in the image below.

From a physics perspective and a photography standpoint, the following should be true.

• Point A and Point B should be equal in terms of clarity as there is no question that they are of essentially the same distance to the photographer.
•  Point A and Point C are significantly apart in actual physical distance and should have very different degrees of clarity.

Instead, close examination of this photo in Time magazine reveals the following.

• Point A and Point B are vastly different in the degrees of clarity.
• Point A and Point C are practically identical in that regard.

It is possible that I am missing something, but the only explanation I can come up with is that this photo has been doctored or photoshoped to blur in a gradient manner away from President Obama.  Now, it is one thing to crop, to adjust the contrast and saturation of a photo so it prints well.  It's completely another thing to photoshop and manipulate a picture and to pass it off as an original real photo, which it does not appear to be in this case.  Other incidents of similar degrees of manipulations have long been considered unacceptable and set off firestorms in the past with other media.

As a loyal Time reader, I hope I am wrong but as stated earlier, it's difficult to come up with another explanation at this point other than that this is no longer a true photo but a digitally manipulated image that is being passed off as the real thing and a prominent leading two-page spread for the inauguration article.  This is manipulation and not enhancement.

If you have any questions, please contact me at lovetimemag@yahoo.com.

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