Joe and Jill Biden visited Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter a few days ago, and yesterday a photo of the visit was released. It's been making the rounds of the internet every since.
The Bidens look like giants compared to the Carters! What's going on?
There's a lot of talk about flash shadows and wide-angle lenses and so forth, but I don't buy it. I don't think the lack of shadows makes much difference, and the lens has introduced only a small bit of distortion (take a look at the picture frame on the far left to see how little there is).
In fact, this is all pretty simple: The Bidens really are bigger than the Carters and Jimmy is slouching, which makes him look even smaller than normal. Here are the measurements:
The chairs look fairly normal, so I'm figuring them at 35" tall and then using that as a baseline to measure the Bidens. Joe clocks in at 51", which seems about right. I'm a couple of inches taller than him and I stand 53" or so when I'm kneeling.
Jill Biden is six inches shorter than Joe, and in the picture she measures seven inches shorter. That may be measuring error on my part, or maybe she's just not standing as fully rigid as Joe the politico.
The wide-angle lens does make the Bidens slightly wider than they should be, but only by a little. The main reason they look like offensive linemen is because the Carters are so thin.
So that's that. To the extent that there's an optical illusion here, it's mainly because Jill/Jimmy are a lot closer to the camera than Joe/Rosalynn. But overall, the difference in sizes is quite real.
Yeah.....I’m going to go with a hard no on that.
Those chairs are doll-sized compared to the Biden’s and being “slightly” closer to the camera isn’t going to account for that.That picture looks like a scene from the Lord of the Rings.
Although...at second look... the bottom edge of the chairs the Carter’s are seated in (which should be straight but instead are curved in an obvious arc) there is definitely lens distortion going on. That lens distortion makes Kelvin’s measurements useless, however it could explain the proportional problems with the photo.
What a weird picture.
Kevin’s not Kelvin’s.
Edit feature would be nice
Thank god someone has done it!
But I do think the impression given is caused by the wide lens, look at how elongated Carter's legs are, and how massive the chair on the far right, nearest the lens, appears.
Yes.
Old people get smaller.
Yes. And the Carters look good for being in their 90's.
You can see a different picture taken outside with a telephoto lens -- https://bityl.co/6gay -- showing that they're the same proportion, height-wise, as in the indoor photo. Getting old sucks after you hit 50. Things break down including your height.
Note that Jimmy Carter’s shoes look enormous. And compare them to his ankles. I think there’s some lens distortion going on.
I actually think this telephoto shot reveals just how much the interior shot with a wide-angle lens distorts. The difference in the respective widths of Mrs Carter's and Joe's shoulders in the exterior shot is far less than in the interior one.
yeah, I think it's the combination of a few factors all pointing in the same direction, anchored especially by Joe and Mrs. Carter. She is thin, she's seated and the angle "hides" her thighs, Joe is slightly to her foreground in a way that's not obvious, maybe the wide angle thing.
any one of those factors is visible by looking closely, but taking the whole picture in, it's hard for my brain to keep the impression at bay.
Joe is also in front of Rosalynn's chair, not next to it.
The Carters are shrinking to the size of the lust in their hearts.
I am happy to live in a country where ex-presidents shrink after they leave office. How soon till Trump is the size of a golf ball?
Didn't you see the report El Jefe is down 15 pounds since leaving office (to a svelte 228 lbs) because he's not eating the complimentary M&Ms on Air Force One?
The wide-angle lens undoubtedly used here is a big factor. A wide-angle not only widens things at the periphery, but also expands the perceived distances between subjects. Even though Joe is maybe only a foot or two closer to the camera than Mrs Carter, that ends up being a large amount proportionally with a shot at this close range, which means he appears correspondingly that much larger. Mr Carter is interesting because his extended body recedes backwards from the camera at an angle, with his head farther from the camera than Jill while his feet are the closest of all things in the room. So even though Jill seems to dominate slightly over Mr Carter's upper body (enhanced perhaps slightly due to widening distortion of her at the periphery), his legs and feet seem disproportionately long/large. Of course, the foreshortening due to the angle of his pose also reduces his perceived size compared to Jill, who is kneeling nearly perpendicular to the camera view.
Yeah, what MindGame says. Just look at the heads. Those don't shrink so much when people get old. Jill and Joe being closer to the camera have heads that occupy more pixels than the further away heads of Rosalyn and Jimmy.
Wikipedia has an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion_(photography)
Yes, it's precisely why you don't (usually) use a wide-angle lens for close portraits since the nearness of the nose to the camera makes it appear unusually large in proportion to the rest of the head.
It's a beautiful picture of two beautiful people. Don't ruin it with over-analysis!
Four beautiful people!!!
Lets bring this blog post back into focus
We have a picture of 2 different generations of Democratic Presidents
Both of whom in their different ways define their party
Joe B came into office AFTER a disaster of a Trump presidency. He could stand still, not say a word and be a better President than Trump. But that's not his style. He knows he's got work to do and he goes about it with a sharp sense of whats needed by the people.
Jimmy Carter OTOH was affected by things that happened around him. The Arab Oil Embargo, a riled up Middle East, and the takeover of our Embassy. He accepted blame for what went wrong and when things went right he handed out accolades to others.
Bit what Jimmy did was show America that humility was a gift to be cherished. After leaving the Presidency he saw a need for housing and joined in with Habitat for Humanity to help build houses for those in need. His endeavors after leaving the White House were in many ways more important that what he did while in the White House. His post White House work is a glaring example of what mankind is SUPPOSED to be like.
Jimmy Carter is an example of what a world leader SHOULD be.