Although not yet quantifiable, comparison photography is the single most
effective tool for demonstrating the visual results of exercise. But to be truly
comparable, before/after photography must be rigidly standardized. Otherwise, it is all
too easy for the photography to highlight aesthetics rather than real physical changes in
the subject. The proper procedure for comparison photography involves much detail which is
postponed to a later installment of this newsletter.
One might ask why the exercise physiologists have not embraced photography. Other sciences
use photography for many documentational purposes. The Bureau of Standards dwelled on
photography heavily during the 1920's in the development of procedures and film to be used
in spectroscopy. The Bureau did this so well, in fact, that Eastman Kodak petitioned
political interference to prevent the development of emulsions that compromised Kodak's
commercial interest abroad. (This is not common knowledge in the film industry today. It
is courtesy of Donald Hubbard, PhD. Dr. Hubbard served the Bureau as a surface
chemist from 1925 to 1964.)
Even the early body culture magazines and pamphlets of the 1910's and 1920's used
photography extensively to demonstrate dramatic possibilities of strength training.
One would believe that the exercise physiologists might clamor for a tool that could show
the world how a human being improved from exercise physiology programs. Of course, the
aerobics-based exercise physiologists were not interested in showing that their programs
had crippled it's participants or that most of their elite distance runners looked so
emaciated as to be confused with escaped prisoners of a death camp.
Exercise physiology required a measurement means that did two things: one - it
produced quantifiable data that gave the proof of the physiological improvements; two - it
adapted well to the activity for which the exercise physiologists wanted confirmation and
approval - running. Comparison photography does not suit their purposes. Therefore, by and
large, exercise physiologists do not possess the skills nor the appreciation of comparison
photography in research.