College Offers to Use Photoshop to Fake Mortarboard Throwing Photos
Well, this is odd. A university in the UK is banning the traditional throwing of mortarboards at graduation; but no worries, they say, students can pretend to throw their hats and the event’s photographer will Photoshop them in after!
This year’s graduation at the University of East Anglia in the UK is going to be a strange (and possibly quite comical) one. Groups of students who want to take the traditional mortarboard throwing photograph with their friends won’t be allowed to. They’ll have to pretend to do it, and rely on Photoshop instead.
The ban on mortarboard throwing—and the admittedly silly alternative—has supposedly been put in place for safety reasons. According to ITV News, it follows, “a number of injuries over recent years” from falling mortarboards. But the price of safety is tradition. Penguin Photography will be photographing the graduation, and while they traditionally offer one formal photo and one mortarboard throw photo, this year they’re faking the second one in Photoshop.
“We were asked by UEA not to do the photo of students throwing their mortarboards in the air,” says the company. “[And] rather than lose this classic photograph completely, we have offered to continue the mortarboard-throwing photograph tradition by offering to Photoshop the hats in afterwards.”
There is an ever-so-tiny silver lining here though: the second photo has been discounted due to “it not being ideal.”
(via Digital Trends)
Image credits: Graduation Day by Md saad andalib.
