Sports Illustrated and Kate Upton have made a big deal about how difficult and uncomfortable it was to shoot a cover layout in Antarctica, but — this is why I’m tapping this out — nobody believes location shoots anyway. Certainly not in the realm of still photography. There is some element of belief when it comes to features, but the trust factor is ebbing as we speak. CGI fakery has ruined so much in terms of faith in actual things.

I believed that Zero Dark Thirty was shot in real Middle East locations and I’ll believe any Werner Herzog documentary, but a photo of an exotic backdrop means almost nothing these days. Almost everything has become a kind of lie. So S.I. should’ve saved themselves the grief and shot Upton in front of a green-screen in a Manhattan studio and dropped in Antarctica backdrops. Nothing matters. It’s all bullshit.