Too much Photoshop? Judge for yourself

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Permalink Reply by Matt Needham on April 19, 2009 at 12:53pm

"...then you should not do any modifications to the image other than noise reduction, spot removal or a slight exposure adjustment..."

How about applying a characteristic curve to the raw data? What about converting a negative image to a positive version? Manipulating contrast with materials choice or technique variation? Burning and dodging? Cropping? Converting a color image to BW? Taking 3 color filtered BW images, and using them to make a single color image? Is there a difference between tweaking saturation in the film manufacturing process, or in-camera processing, or out-of-camera processing? Photographer controlled lighting? I can go on all day about how photos most folks would perceive as straight have been manipulated.

The problem comes from 150 years of misunderstanding what photography is. Photography is realism, not truth, and there is a very significant difference. It's pretty easy to find radically different versions of the same photo by W. Eugene Smith, and other famous PJs. They got away with it because the masses didn't understand what was possible in the darkroom (and still don't). Photoshop does make image manipulation easier, but what it's really done is educate the masses to the possibilities.

I can think of a few solutions:

1) The professional journalism organizations can come up with comprehensive rules as to what is and isn't allowed.

2) PJs can be required to use official news gear and processing software that doesn't allow for extra manipulation.

3) All news photos will be accompanied by their metadata and processing history. Then the viewer can see how the photo was created, and judge for themselves how factual it is.

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on April 19, 2009 at 6:20pm

The original photos are a bit bland when given the default conversion treatment and the submitted photos are a bit over done for my taste, too saturated. If you start with the "original" JPG and load it into Photoshop Elements, with a couple of minutes effort, you can get a pretty good approximation of the submitted photos by just adjusting Levels and Saturation.

Seems to me, photo journalism should be about representing relevant facts, so turning night into day, or day into night, and adding or deleting elements within the picture would be misrepresentation. Adding contrast, lightening or darkening the photo or increasing saturation all of which may enhance the photo to aid visibility of the elements would only constitute misrepresentation if light or color were relevant to the story; "the woman was wearing a bright red dress" for instance would require a photo with a reasonable color match.

The "originals" and those submitted appear to have all the same elements, in the same places. The photos would have been equally changed if they were converted to black and white.

The rules appear to allow for changes to white balance and exposure, as well as cropping and dust removal. I don't see the judge's problem.

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Permalink Reply by Murray Edwards on April 19, 2009 at 7:05pm

I've figured this post would create a little conversation. For the most part photojournalist images tell a story, relate a moment in time. What you saw through the viewfinder as you clicked the shutter. The issue now-a-days, way too many people spend more time using editing software to correct mistakes or make adjustments that should not be made for that type of image usage. If a wall is green, but you change to color to blue, then you have altered how that image is representing the subject matter.

All digital cameras produce noise "grain in the old days" and if your sensor is dirty then your have spots that will need to removed. Correcting those are completely acceptable, we also use to push film when we got caught with the wrong ISO film, which could alter the exposure of an image. But the main image "content" was not altered. And yes cropping an image is fine, I left that out earlier, but removing a object is not.

What editors in this space want is be able to trust what they are looking is a realistic depiction. Remember a few years back when a freelance photography added a few extra smoke plumes to a bombing in Iraq, he just wanted to add a little emphasis to the shot. Once discovered, the publisher had to make a public retraction.

Now if you want take a image and add emphasis, or alter in any way you want, have at it, but sell it as a print or offer it up in the commercial space, no-one cares if the sky is 10 times bluer that it really was, or that shadow falling across a person's face really weren't that deep.

As to black and white, for the most part I still shoot TMAX for that, but have on occasion converted a color digital image to black and white, but I inform by client if I did.

Over the last 20 years, I've been published more times that I care to count, I've covered natural disasters like Katrina, tornadoes and way too many news events, my clients know that what they see or license is an accurate account of situation at hand.

This is a competitive business, you cannot afford to lose your creditability.

I'm sure may folks will disagree with these assessments and I respect your opinion, but you need to understand how to position yourself and the photographic market you plan to address.

Murray

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Permalink Reply by PhotoHand on April 20, 2009 at 2:32pm

"A few extra smoke plumes" were added to the Israeli bombing in Lebanon by a pro-Arab freelance journalist who did this with a malicious intent which was further confirmed by his angry email to the blogger who first noticed what was so obvious but had somehow escaped the attention of the Reuters editors. On the other hand, if you fix the smudged makeup on the bride's face in a photo, you are making things right for her. And this is what she expects from a good photographer. It's the intent that counts.

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Permalink Reply by Kayla Thomas on April 20, 2009 at 3:30pm

I agree, very interesting.

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Permalink Reply by Larry Van Valkenburgh on April 21, 2009 at 4:11pm

I agree with Erica completely. I take a photograph because I like what I'm looking at and the only changes I might make, might be a little exposure and or color correction and maybe some cropping.
Anything else is too much photoshop!

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