Photo manipulation ethics

Have you ever seen a shadow or reflection of something and wonder what it was? Like the clouds we saw as kids and imagined it was an animal or face we recognize, or a bizarre relleXion in a puddle that might give you a shiver?

 

It is something that’s really there but our imagination makes it something else for the moment. We can see something we want to in it, or things we’re not sure of until our eyes adjust to it and our mind says oh yeah, now I see it.

 

I like to capture if possible or create images that you have to look twice at to know what it is. It stirs the senses. On the other hand have a contrasting image that is exactly what it is, like a swan in a gleaming lake or church steeple in front of a dramatic sky, but still its fun to look at & see things that dazzle the eye.

 

I hope my photos inspire you to see things differently & look a little deeper at what you see ~ Let’s be surprised and let our imagination be our eyes.

 

 

 

Today’s news in the world of photojournalism comes from Sacramento, where Bryan Patrick was suspended for combining two images of egrets vying for a tasty frog. Patrick is one of the best shooters in the country and a consistent winner of the Regional Photographer of the Year awards from both the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) and the Bay Area Press Photographers (BAPPA). The sad part of the story is the real images were beautiful, well composed photos. Unfortunately, in the quest for a great image, he stepped over that ethical line.

 

What is our ethical line? The line can be a little wavy and faded at times, but a clear, hard, thick line appears for photo manipulation when combining two images. A big no, no unless you inform the reader you have composed a photo illustration. At the Press Democrat, we label manipulated images as a photo illustration, and you wont see illustrations in our news sections, only in our features section.

 

Why not manipulate images to make them better when Photoshop is such a powerful tool? We rely on the community to trust us to present the truth in the newspaper. When you see an image of a rescued drowning victim, or police hunting for Bassler in Ft. Bragg, you should not have to question if the photo is real. We hope the readers trust us, yet I’ve found many people who believe we are constantly setting up or manipulating photos. Newspapers are the last bastion of image integrity, and when an incident like this occurs it hurts us all.

 

A couple of quick rules of the road. We constantly lighten and darken small areas of photographs and adjust the color of the image for a more accurate rendition of the computers interpretation of the scene. When we switched from film our working model was anything we could do in the darkroom, we could do in the computer (only a lot more accurately).  The line becomes a bit more fuzzy when it comes to sharpening and blurring images. We sharpen nearly all our images, but a tool exists in photoshop to selectively blur areas of an image. We use long lenses with wide apertures to blur backgrounds in the camera, but should we be able to blur them in post production? How about directing people in photos? We can ask someone to put on a body paint and a hockey mask for a portrait, but can we ask someone playing frisbee to do so in better light for a feature photo? Sounds like an interesting topic for another blog post. Keep coming back.