In what should have been a simple presidential photo-op with current President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter, due to a distortion in the image, lively social media discussions began, and hysterical commentary ensued.
From the large-scale of Carter’s feet, to the Lilliputian look of Rosalynn Carter, people are asking why the photo sent out from the Carter Center Monday, looks as strange as it does.
The odd look of the photo could come from using a wide-angle lens.
“When taking photos in a smaller space you often don’t have room to move far enough back to get everyone in the frame, so you use a lens that can take it all in. Unfortunately, if you use a lens that is really wide, while also standing very close to the subjects, it will distort the photo, making those close to the camera appear giant while shrinking those further away,” Carly Earl explains to Naaman Zhou in the Guardian.
When using a zoom lens, the opposite happens, subjects can appear closer together.
For the record, Carter is 5’10” and President Biden is 6’0”.