The photograph taken and edited by Erick Pleitez showcases a human hand reaching out to a dog resting its head on the fencewire of its shelter cage. The depth of field in the image blurs the background so that the viewer can only focus on the hand and dog, rather than the contents of the cage or other various distractions. He has also edited the photo to appear as black and white instead of full color. All of these concepts can be analyzed and evaluated on both how they portray the image in comparison to reality and how they alter our perception.
The publisher of this image is Erick Pleitez, a frequent disaster/animal photographer. His background influences how we interpret the photo because it allows us to understand the image from his personal lens – these animals in shelters are in poor condition and need better homes than what they have had previously. The intended message of this image is telling viewers to go out and adopt animals in shelters in order to keep them from being alone/ suffer further. This is mainly perceptible because the dog is reaching out for the person’s hand as if it hasn’t interacted with a human in a while, and the fact that it is locked up in the fence and can’t reach the outside world indicates that they are trapped in a different world. This brings a segway to another aspect of the photo that has a powerful message behind it – the dog’s body language.
In the middle of the photo, we can see that the dog is leaning on the fence as if it is weak. Resting its head on the small fence opening highlights this. Another part of its body language that can be analyzed is its eyes. It appears that, while hard to tell because of the fence covering its eyes partly, its eyes are closed. This indicates the dog is tired or possibly in pain. Both of these likely outcomes correlate with the color correction on the image, black and white.
The monochrome color correction on this photo signifies a dark, depressive tone to the viewer. The lack of color brings a cold and sad view to the viewer’s mind when evaluating the picture. This effect is then multiplied by the body language of both the person and dog – the dog is reaching out of its fence cage revealing it wants to be around the human, but at the same time, it is resting on the cage meaning it is tired and possibly unmotivated. The person is reaching out as if they wish they could help the dog but is unable to or unconnected. The focus is on the dog reaching out to the human wanting to be taken into their home instead of remaining in the animal shelter. The use of depth of field blurs out the outside edges of the photo, leaving the center of the photo in focus and allowing the viewer to easily see the dog reaching out to the person’s hand, wishing for a better life. This all signifies a pathos approach to persuading viewers to adopt and care for animals in struggling circumstances, as they exploit human emotion and common affection for said animals.
A way this image could be altered to portray a more satirical definition would be to add blood dripping from the dog’s mouth. Everything else in the image, including the black and white CC (color correction), depth of field, the dog’s expression, and even the person’s hand reaching out to them. This would be satirical towards animal lovers – extremist ones, at that. Why would blood dripping from the dog’s mouth add satire to the image? The blood would signify that the dog had done something horrible and was possibly rabid, digging their teeth deep into a human’s skin. Meanwhile, the hand would still be reaching out to the dog, as if it had done nothing wrong. This would represent how some animal-loving extremists try to hide bad habits animals have and still love them just as another human. They ignore the negatives to animals in a naive manner simply for the reason that animals are “cute” or “more loyal than these horrible humans they are stuck with.” The image would exemplify this by showing clear evidence of the dog’s potential to harm further people,yet some individuals will still reach out and try to pet and “calm” the dog, as the person in the picture is. This would not only bring satire into the image, but also play into how humans as a whole are always affected by bias and struggle to maintain a fully factual debate due to our naivety on subject matters we haven’t dealt with first-hand. Almost all information we receive is filtered through multiple sources, making it tough to find information not altered by a bias report.
Both the original image and its theorized different version indicate to society that information can be filtered and lead to bias in the way we perceive events. Because of this, we must be more aware of our surroundings and fact-check what we see on social media and untrustworthy news sources by looking to non-partisan reports and sources so that we can acquire raw facts and data rather than manipulated half-truths that will change how we view situations in the real world.
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