Setting it straight: Photo manipulated at the Sac. Bee

Damaso

Damaso

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"The Sacramento Bee published a photograph taken during the Galt Winter Bird Festival of a snowy egret grabbing for a frog just caught by a great egret. This week we learned the photograph had been digitally altered by the photographer in violation of our standards. While the original photo did show that same snowy egret grabbing for the frog from the great egret, the photographer merged in a different image of the great egret, in which the frog was more visible. As a result, the published photo included duplicated images of the plants."

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/01/4232790/setting-it-straight-photo-manipulated.html

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I certainly agree with the newspaper's decision. No image manipulation must be allowed in journalism, none. Otherwise readers will always wonder where is the line between acceptable manipulation and unacceptable.

Now this does only applies to journalism. If you want to grossly manipulate a photo to hang on your wall at home, I could care less.
 
Bob Michaels said:
I certainly agree with the newspaper's decision. No image manipulation must be allowed in journalism, none. Otherwise readers will always wonder where is the line between acceptable manipulation and unacceptable.

Now this does only applies to journalism. If you want to grossly manipulate a photo to hang on your wall at home, I could care less.
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I completely agree with the above. However, while the line between journalism and private use of a photo is pretty obvious, the one between journalism (make use of images to investigate and document events) and art (use images for aesthetical or emotional purposes) is a bit fuzzier. I'm thinking of landscape or animal photos, for instance, where one may see both a journalistic / documetary side and a purely aesthetical one (the "wow" reaction they sometimes seem to have as only goal).
 
Bob Michaels said:
I certainly agree with the newspaper's decision. No image manipulation must be allowed in journalism, none. Otherwise readers will always wonder where is the line between acceptable manipulation and unacceptable.

Now this does only applies to journalism. If you want to grossly manipulate a photo to hang on your wall at home, I could care less.
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I may be coming in a bit late to this party but isn't the current trend in cost-cutting measures to fire the professionals of journalism? With the pro's gone just who does uphold the ethicist of print and media ? Maybe it's just too expencive for outfits like CNN, to name one, and the BEE to bother to even try offering any kind of image authenticity. Perhaps that illusion is the real "image" manipulation. (for additional info read up on the current Murdock hearings or view Fix News)
 
Bob Michaels said:
No image manipulation must be allowed in journalism, none.
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I agree with you ... but ... there's always a but. Does "none" mean no RAW conversion? RAW conversion allowed, but not using Photoshop? Even though Lightroom uses the same engine? Do we say "no products from Adobe"? Would that be legal?

Can a negative be scanned (into somethig other than Photoshop)? Can the results be colour-corrected, contrast adjusted etc.? Or can that only be done in a wet darkroom? Or not even there? And how does it get fed into modern printing or broadcast equipment? Let alone a web site? Can it be converted and corrected along the way? (You know, for different colour spaces, RGB/CMYK etc.)

"Manipulation" seems too broad, somehow.

I'd be much happier saying like: nothing can be added that's not present in the original (negative, slide or RAW/JPEG) nor removed except by cropping. That's closer anyway, to my mind. And there'll still be marginal cases. For example, I'd be OK with stitched panoramas, as long as their use was disclosed. I'm guessing others might not be.

...Mike
 
mfunnell said:
I'd be much happier saying like: nothing can be added that's not present in the original (negative, slide or RAW/JPEG) nor removed except by cropping.

...Mike
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In many cases things are neither removed or added, but just moved to a more or less different position in the photos, for instance to make the main subject stand out better. This may IMO be acceptable if the photo is used for aesthetical / emotional purposes (art), but not in documentary photography / journalism.
 
Andrea Taurisano said:
I completely agree with the above. However, while the line between journalism and private use of a photo is pretty obvious, the one between journalism (make use of images to investigate and document events) and art (use images for aesthetical or emotional purposes) is a bit fuzzier. I'm thinking of landscape or animal photos, for instance, where one may see both a journalistic / documetary side and a purely aesthetical one (the "wow" reaction they sometimes seem to have as only goal).
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Personally, I think that's a dangerous distinction.
 
Andrea Taurisano said:
In many cases things are neither removed or added, but just moved to a more or less different position in the photos, for instance to make the main subject stand out better. This may IMO be acceptable if the photo is used for aesthetical / emotional purposes (art), but not in documentary photography / journalism.
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The photographer has the options to choose a certain lens or he had something in mind with the framing he used. With that he grabbed a frame out of the real world without a lot of things around the frame. There is no difference when you change the framing afterwards a home.
 
Andrea Taurisano said:
In many cases things are neither removed or added, but just moved to a more or less different position in the photos
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OK: point taken. I should, perhaps insert: "[...], nor repositioned, [...nor removed...]"

What I was trying to get at was that some things which might be termed "manipulation" (eg. adjusting contrast, or converting from RRB to CMYK) are legitimate, while others (inserting or removing a person from the scene) are not. A blanket prohibition of "manipulation" may result in both being abolished, to potentially absurd effect.

...Mike
 
Manipulation in this sense means only adding or removing something from the photo that is displayed. Cropping is alright as the photo itself will not become a lie (the meaning may change, but journalism is never neutral). Contrast and all that stuff is fine as it only changes the aesthetics, not the content.
The media does understand this.

"The photographer has been suspended pending investigation."
IMO, investigate what? Choose your battles huh.. not like it was groundbreaking news 😀
 
What I was trying to get at was that some things which might be termed "manipulation" (eg. adjusting contrast, or converting from RRB to CMYK) are legitimate, while others (inserting or removing a person from the scene) are not. A blanket prohibition of "manipulation" may result in both being abolished, to potentially absurd effect.
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Adjusting for these variables only controls the interpretation of the image through colour, contrast, tones. It is not manipulating the facts and information that are within the photograph. I think the argument is that subjects should not be changed/altered -They need to be exactly as they are or else you are distorting reality.

Of course, this changes if bust the contrast through the roof where it shows almost nothing but lines or saturate one colour so that it looks like it was taken in a volcano. But then we're not talking about photographic journalism or photography that is meant to portray the "real".

The problem with your question is that it's too slippery of a slope. Every camera, lens, program, scanner, film, etc etc will interpret contrast, colour, tones in a different way. This is not manipulation, it's just how it happens. The photographer than steps in to make adjustments (not alterations -contrast is already there, colours are already there) to fit their interpretation of the image. I think you're stretching the definition of manipulation.

Doing this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI) is nothing like adjusting contrast.
 
Oh, what an endless thread this could be. The answer would different on other forums of course.

The only change you can make to framing after returning home is to crop what you've got. (Re-)Composition using elements of different images or moving elements of the extant image is creating something new that did not exist and probably could not be seen at the time the photo was taken. At this stage I have a strong view that the resulting image should not be called a photograph, although you might like to grace it with the title, 'photographically derived artwork'. My view can be seen in terms of being faithful to the geometry of the projected image (this ignores that you can make a 'real chemical photo' and angle and twist the paper under the enlarger to do somehting very different).

Other manipulation - colour balance/saturation, convert/shoot in mono, bright/dark, local and global contrast, dodge and burn etc can all go so far that they invalidate the image as being in anyway representative. Ultimately, this will depend on the use and intent.

Here is a photograph - the geometry is faithful to the image making element (a home made zone plate) and the contrast has been increased to bring the image out of the low contrast recording made by the film. Only you can decide where it falls...


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This one has been manipulated in photoshop, though there's no cloning or re-arranging. It's just blurred overlays etc


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and htis one is heavily cropped

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PKR said:
Photo Tampering

http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/
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yes, the history always gets brought up. The examples usually fall into the artistic amusment category or the clear deception category. The former started when photographers were trying to demonstrate that photography was an art on the level of painting etc and the latter fell to advertising and propaganda. Both remain current and both depend on the underlying value that a photograph, basically, this happened and if you had been stood there you coudl have seen it.
 
I'm glad the paper was so up front about what happened. It's still beyond me why a good photographer would throw away a career like that...
 
Bob Michaels said:
I certainly agree with the newspaper's decision. No image manipulation must be allowed in journalism, none. Otherwise readers will always wonder where is the line between acceptable manipulation and unacceptable.
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I agree as well. I once had a dilemma along these lines. My editor wanted a superwide shot of a housing project and my widest lens is 25mm. I sent it to him and he was happy. However the people at layout said they needed it wider. I told my editor to give me 30 minutes and sent him a photo of two images stitched together. I told him what I had done and that he'd likely have to run the caption as a photo composite or something similar. He was really not into it and said layout will just have to deal.

I later learned one of the other editors at the paper was partly fired from another paper due to an incorrect caption (I also heard the managing editor at that paper was just in a mood and fired someone else that day too). Just goes to show a photojournalist needs to be just as much if not moreso a journalist than a photographer. And I think that's the difference between someone with a twitter account and a camera, and legitimate members of the press.
 
Damaso said:
I'm glad the paper was so up front about what happened. It's still beyond me why a good photographer would throw away a career like that...
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No doubt. It's not as if the photographer's manipulation created some wonderful award-winning image. The composite image was only slightly better than the original, at least to me.
It makes you wonder what was going through his head. Why this one? I'll also bet the newspaper is taking a close look at other work done by this photographer.
 
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