I received this in my inbox from an unnamed correspondant:
"I've been sent this photo by several people in the past few days. Looks too perfect to be real."
(ETA: After comments, I've removed the image from the page, but you can view it
here.)
Well, it's certainly been posted to the
BridalBloopers website, but all the information with it states is that it has been posted by a woman named Amanda Sell from Mount Vernon, WA.
As to whether it's real or not, it's hard to say. The description on the website says:
"If you can laugh after flashing 200 guests, you'll be able to handle anything in marriage right?" Of course, given the shot, it's impossible to tell whether or not this is a photograph from a real wedding or some sort of photo shoot, or whether the alleged 'flashing of 200 guests' occurred (isn't the bride usually facing
away from the wedding party when throwing the bouquet?)
The photograph doesn't
appear to be photoshopped, but the muscle structure and colouration of the bride's chest seem a little odd.
Comments
I have actually had this happen to me - not a wedding dress but a strapless top when i was out at a club - easy to happen and very embarassing!!!
The original photo genuinely shows a genuine garment malfunction. The strange shapes near the shoulders the pectoralis muscle pulled in a strange way by the extreme rotation of her hands. I can get an identical look by raising my hands and rotating my hands, and I'm a skinny white man with no breasts. Skinny may be the key, because fat would make those muscles less pronounced.
The strange shape of the breasts are what you would expect from a soft body frozen by a photographer's strobe.
But the strobe is where the fakery is exposed. There must be a powerful strobe, or the whole thing would be blurry. (What wedding photographer shoots without a strobe?) But with a strobe very close to the lens would illuminate the area between the breasts, not make dark shadows there. Put your finger over the faked cleavage, and the rest is exactly right.
So the "artist" jazzed up the accidental boob shot, that's all. As someone else pointed out, the shadows are too dark, and the wrong color.
Finally, the nipples show the breasts are in very different positions, yet the curvature between them in unnaturally perfect. The offset position of the nipples match the dress, which would not be expected to come off both breasts at exactly the same split second.
The image is fake, but not the way most people would assume.
And as a retoucher, it is common for the brain to ignore even startling retouching mistakes. Not only ignore them, but embrace them. I've made a living on this principle.
That un-retouched image is here.
Without retouching, the woman looks masculine because her smallish (natural) breasts are being pulled flat, and the angle of the strobe intensifies the flat look. So somebody tried to make the photo look more "realistic" by adding the fake boob shadow.
Without the weird shadow, the image still looks odd, but that's due to the rotation of the arms, the paleness of the skin, and the motion frozen by the flash, er, strobe.