Another Starboard photoshop?

[southwesterly]

I don't know why they do this considering all the great team riders and photos they do have.
In one shot he's is on a 10'3". Then they use the same shot, plus some photoshop, for the new 8'10' Widepoint.
Why?

[JonathanC]

Man that guy has consistent technique

[surfcowboy]

The company seems to have no respect for the fact that in action sports, we value pros for showing us what the equipment can do through photos and video and we must have honesty in performance images or else there's no point in shooting at all.

Read that again and send it to someone at Starboard. We value Pros and great riders and the photographers who risk their butts to get amazing footage of the equipment doing great things. Showing us what the boards can do, in the right hands, is key to selling gear. Key.

I'm calling bullsh%t on this one.

Otherwise you could just photoshop me on a 20 foot wave and make my board a Starboard and it'd be fine. I'd make a great pro that way. But it's not.. it's lying. It's dishonest and disrespectful to the people who have put in their hours and put their lives on the line to "get the shot."

Do we photoshop models in fashion mags? Yes. Do we do it to food and other products so we can make it all look more appealing? Yes, but no one is looking to a picture of a McDonald's burger to determine how it tastes. We look at performance pictures to see how a board might perform and what it's capabilities are.

In action sports, the preservation of the honesty of the imagery is HUGE. Yes, Kai Lenny surfs like that. Yes, Laird rode that wave. Yes, Gerry Lopez did "that" at Pipe. It's real, it has to be or else the whole game collapses.

Starboard is sending me a message that they don't care to further the sport by paying pros to get real shots. They are telling me that they don't value the efforts of photographers. They are telling me that I shouldn't trust when I see Dave Muir shred a Tahitian wave because he may have just been at Dogpatch and they bought some wave shots from the internet to paste him into. You can't have it both ways. Either someone did something or they didn't. Don't lie, don't twist, not in those kinds of shots, shots of people doing amazing things on waves.

I work in the media, I help people do impossible things on video and film everyday but that technology should never be applied to action sports footage where the person's performance is unbelievable on it's own.

Anybody wanna see some shots of me towing into Jaws? Let me know cause I can either spend a few years in the water... or a few minutes at the computer... and none of you would ever know.

[tautologies]

..I'd say both of those are shopped...as in those boards were never in that shot...

[Lobes]

I wonder what he was riding in the original shot of this? Might not even be a starboard.

[Boludo]

Disrespectful of the sport.  I understand marketing but man do it the real way.  Plenty of awesome true shots so why the hokey PS jobs.
From where did you see these photos?

[tautologies]

..to be honest I don't care too much if they shopped it..it really depends on why and what they were using it for....

but I must say it is a pretty fu#$7ing poor PS job.

[southwesterly]

I got both pics off the new website. The first one is off the home page. The photoshopped one is in the "Products" page, under 8'10" Wide point.

http://www.star-board-sup.com/

I can't believe they thought no one would notice.

[LaPerouseBay]

I can't believe they named a board 'candy ast'.

The last time they were called out for photoshopping there was some defense due to the circumstances. 

Maybe a starboard rep can help clear this one up.  Not that anyone has to, half truths and advertising go hand in hand.   

But, that 'photo' sort of bugs me.  When I read the text associated with the 'photo' it sounds like a bunch of damn lies.  Not that there's anything wrong with that... 

 

[Dwight (DW)]

Ditto to what surfcowboy said. Spot-on.

[DavidJohn]

Maybe it's ridgie-didge.. It may be two frames from a vid and the wide angle lens has distorted things as he gets closer?

DJ

[cg]

ridgie-didge?....I think not......these guys are from real...fairdinkum!......
coowee cobber

[PonoBill]

As someone who routinely lied for money (PR and Advertising) I'd have to say that really sucks. I'd fire the art director that did something like that for being absurdly lazy and putting the company in a bad light--or at the very least let him(her) know that they were now flying one mistake high. A friend's dad once told him "you have to be honest, but you don't need to be stupidly honest". In this case I'd say "Advertising is lies, but it shouldn't be stupid lies".

No question in my mind that this will cost them sales. Not that people will boycott, or anything dramatic, but when you have the choice of this one or that one you choose the one you believe in.

[Weasels wake]

I've always thought that this was a photoshopped photo by them, but this type to me is okay, they are making no attempt at misrepesenting a board.  It's just an artsy fartsy shot that attracts your attention, it attracted mine to the point that I added it to my slide show screen saver.  No problem here.

But the other examples that have shown on here on this site are examples that border on compromising truth in advertising and it shouldn't be done, they are only hurting themselves.  And I find it hard to believe that with all the photos that they must have of their boards being used, they can't find good honest ones.  

[surfcowboy]

Glad you guys "got it". I didn't want to sound like a jerk but I feel this needed to be addressed.

This isn't like making a product look better with lighting and enhancement. This is showing a product performing in a way that it never did.

I saw Sean Poynter (sp?) from their team surf this year. He could do that move all day long on any of their boards, no photoshop needed.

Another big point that i want to bring up is that this sport will grow as people get to see riders doing amazing, and fun, things on boards. That's the main reason for filming. If people don't sponsor shoots, we don't have good images out there and people will continue to think that we're all riding huge boats and being kooks like 2006. Every shot of Kai and others like him that gets out destroys that kooky image of our sport. Every piece of footage of Connor B running downwind like a maniac shows the energy and excitement of something that doesn't exist in the "other" surfing world. All these things add up to growth, but that stuff has to be paid for by the folks who profit from this sport.

We suffer from a lack of footage and a lack of coverage in this tiny sport. Recycling pics won't help get the word out. It just makes us look like kooks. Local shapers can't really do this as much (even though some do amazing video work. 404 I see you out there.) It has to come from the industry leaders.  The trade for the big boys is that they get to make the lion's share of the bread... and like Quik and Billabong, they get to foot the bill for pushing the sport out into the mainstream.

We are the country cousin of the surf world and will stay that way unless the manufacturers get more media savvy. "Go-Pro" segments from guys on the internet ain't gonna cut it. We have some great magazines but they need to be fed with great images and content and surrounded by "new media" to sustain an eco-system. People are funding and shooting their own movies for pete's sake!

Kudos to everyone who shoots a good ad or video segment and pays a rider to push the limits. From those shoots come the images that ignite interest, which draws in new paddlers who buy gear, which pays for us all to get better gear, bigger events and in the end, a stronger sport.

I'm done, lol I just love this sport and really want to see it move beyond "rollerblade" status. It's changed my life, really, and I this is the only place I can really speak to these companies. Sorry for the long, rambling post. Hope it makes some sense. And let me know what you guys think about this stuff.