Photoshop Alterations - Pulitzer Prize Winning AP Freelancer Fired

c.poulton

c.poulton

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I agree. This is not removing a hot (or dead) pixel, but significantly altering a situation - it loses all the front line drama and urgency if there are photographers in front of the purported fighter, with the back towards where the enemy would supposedly be. Mind, the picture might be genuine, from a dangerous situation (for the PJ on the left in particular), but the picture is no different from those you could get from by carelessly framing a press pit re-enactment. And it is not permitted to doctor that away, even if the original image gives a wrong impression...
 
It's the right decision, but the funniest thing in the article was "AP’s reputation is paramount " which is a bit of joke.
 
Forgot to add you have to see the heavy manipulation of photographs that had to been done for newspaper prints in the past. Some of the faces were barely recognizable as humans after the contrast enhancements with black and white ink yet nobody complained now with PS nobody trust an image anymore despite the fact that heavy manipulation was the norm and not the exception. So although I consider it the right decision I am tending a bit to a maybe.
 
My feeling is that there's no issue here. The customer has rules, the freelance broke them. Perhaps the freelance will find this a useful learning experience.
 
Justly fired. The camera is a critical piece of info, those guys are getting paid to make videos by 3rd parties to the conflict.
 
^^ Agreed. Also, the notion of cleaning up any journalistic photo beyond toning, minimal dodging/burning, just rubs me the wrong way, precedent or not. You're capturing things as they are, as much as possible... There's so much subjectivity and potential for manipulation simply in where one points the lens and when one trips the shutter, that you really do have to draw a line.
 
Back in the day one would have simply cropped. Which is essentially what every photographer does when they frame a shot.

AP was probably paying the poor guy zilch to be in a freaking war so he edited his photo so he might sell it for a couple hundred bucks. He's between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile the writers and editors slant the verbiage 180 degrees while tut-tutting about some minor photo's integrity. Sounds like BS to me.
 
I find it a little incredible that the photographer wasn't aware of what kind of fuss this type of thing causes these days.
 
More than all the above, it seems to me to be an issue of drawing the line. If they allowed this modification (and that is what it is), the next guy takes a little more leeway and pretty soon you have photoshop creations as news photos.
 
what if he had been a few inches to the left so as to not frame the camera?

that doesnt change the reality of the camera being there, but now it has been ommitted because the photographer was sitting in a different spot rather than photoshop.

the AP can do whatever they want here I just am failing to see this as like, that distinct from selectively framing an image on the spot but that's just me.
 
Agreed. I suppose they have policies on cropping as well. It takes away one concern about 'the truth' at least at the physical picture level. This said, there are many other issues to be concerned about. The 'napalm girl' and 'the police general shooting a man in the head' are good examples.
 
The problem is that audiences are more cynical than ever about imagery as source of information through an increased awareness of manipulation in this day and age of stylized commercial ad photography and CGI in movies. If captured scenes in our news sources would go that route of 'aesthetic optimization', they'd lose all reporting value really. Zero tolerance by the agencies is the right way to maintain photography's value in a democracy and its journalism.
 
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