Manual Focus

Clickbait is as fascinating a phenomenon. It plays on human hunger for scandal where there is none and the fruitless search for quick fixes that are too good to be true. Don’t get me wrong, I love a Buzzfeed listicle as much as the next person, and the number of times I’ve clicked through from Facebook to things where I will not even believe that this place is real, or what this person did next, or that this super top secret ingredient will solve all of my life problems and my Sudoku right now HURRY HURRY, would almost (almost) make me a hypocrite for even writing this post. Because it’s how we consume content, now. Our attention spans have become so short having long ago drowned in the mass media landscape that virality has become a measure of perceived quality when on the most part, the opposite is true. Often, what the headline purports to expose is not at all the subject matter of the article – even at a stretch of the imagination – instead focusing on the most irrelevant detail that might pique the interest of the masses.

That’s the internet for you.

And I suppose publishers need something to justify astronomical advertising figures.

Setting aside the fact that the Daily Mail elected to focus on Miranda’s bralessness and my legs and apparent residence in Brisbane (and yes I’m fully aware that in mentioning their questionable coverage of the story, I’ve managed to fulfil their notoriously click-baiting motivations – you’re welcome, guys), here’s a series of images that I shot in Los Angeles way back in February, that MK and I are proud of, and that I’ve been meaning to share since we launched them alongside the collection Miranda has designed for Swarovski in Austria last month. But of course, the most important thing about this whole project is that she’s wearing a thigh-high split in one shot.

Of course.

This conversation falls within the same wavelength as Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg’s sensational (and slightly confronting) callout of sexism in the

entertainment industry, and Cate Blanchett’s consistent reprimanding of redcarpet coverage. Never mind this story, which is by no means anywhere close to the worst of the internet, or the Daily Mail at that – they’ve really owned this space in the market, and all credit to them. The media at large seems to have a problem with giving not only women, but anybody whose looks are remotely attached to their line of work weather young or old, credit for what they actually do for a living. To an extent, this is a reactive mechanism. The masses want to know about the short dress that Emma

Watson wore to an interview, and not just the dress she wore, god forbid what she actually said at the interview. The masses want to know that Meryl Streep looks good for her age, and not just good. And apparently, the masses want to know that Miranda is not wearing a bra, and not that she designed a jewellery collection. With numbers comes power.

Oh, I’m sorry, did I say power? I meant money.

In that sense, the cycle of information and news dissemination as a whole has become reactive.

Where publications once directed who and what its readers should be paying attention to – as true “authorities” – their scramble to capture a precious five seconds of attention from a disinterested newsfeed scroller has, on the most part, depleted what remains of journalistic standards in the web space.

Meanwhile in print, the Northern Territory Times continues to kick all of the goals. Kind of. And meanwhile in Los Angeles, the shoot was excellent, Frankie was professional, and that’s all there is to know.

The post Manual Focus appeared first on Shine By Three.