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Photographer Fired For Digitally Altering Photo
bewert writes "A sign of things to come? Is this kind of thing happening without anyone catching it? This short article notes that war photog Brian Walski was fired for combining elements from two photos to make one with 'better composition'.
Here is the 'Editor's Note' detailing the transgression. It's not really highlighted on their front page ;) I wonder how often this type of Photoshopping is done without anyone noticing it? To paraphrase Pink Floyd, "Mother, should I trust the government?"..." Another submitter points out an article examining digitally altered magazine covers. Slashdot has done several stories on unnoticeable digital alterations; here's 1, 2, 3 old stories to peruse.
Great, this is just what we need: another reason for Bill O'Reilly to get his panties in a twist over the LA Times.
He already seems to think they are actively aiding the Iraqis by spreading propaganda, and this surely won't help sway his opinion.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
Gee, I saw the 3 photographs and really don't see what the big deal is.
;-)
I can see firing the photographer if he was trying to make something appear to have happened that didn't. That's not the case here. The original and re-touched photograph are conveying the same thing. This is a tempest in a teapot.
I bet that famous photo of the sailor swapping spit with that woman after the war was over was probably Photoshopped too! I bet he was smelling his arm and they inserted her into the scene.
If this were an artistic piece for a magazine, no problem. Hair on Christie Brinkley's upper lip, no problem.
A war photo that is altered so the depiction is inaccurate is unacceptable on any scale. There is not concrete place you can draw a line and say "this much alteration is okay, but this much changes the story".
News commentary can be editorialized by any anchor. Pictures and video have alway been held in higher standing for thier direct integrity. This will rais equestions.
Little Green Footballs has the before(1), before(2) and after shots here.
Ann Margaret's body back in 1989.
Then there was Time darkening O.J. mugshot
Certainly nothing new.....
"Only after the altered photo appeared Monday did editors notice that some civilians in the background appeared twice"
OK now fire Taco next time he posts a story twice !!
this CNN photo composition?
>> To paraphrase Pink Floyd, "Mother, should I trust the government?"..."
The real question is
Should I trust "Mainstream media".
Add to this investiagte why Peter Arnett was fired from CNN a few years ago. Read what Harry Stein wrote in his Autobiography about stories he made up to make his political point.
This is not the government, it's the free press.
to paraphrase Pink Floyd, "Mother, should I trust the government?
While I respect your taste in music -- HUH? The guy was an LA Times photographer. Nowhere does he state that he has any affiliation with the government. The modification in question does not actually change much in the photo (I do NOT deny that it is wrong, just stating that it is not in any way propoganda IN THIS CASE). Don't blame the government for EVERYTHING.
In other news, Kudos to the times for catching the guy, and also for admitting and publishing the "error."
Photos on the web of consumer products are photoshopped all the time. Especially houses and Real estate. They stretch the size of kitchens etc to make them look bigger, or they will remove the house next door to make the place look more isolated. This is just one example. This behaviour is totally unacceptable.
Umm, what does this have to do with anything?
A private citizen behaving unethically for a private company. Hell, the troops he photographed weren't even US troops! (assuming of course that you speak of the US government)
And to answer the question: no, but only because all people are capable of deceit.
3! 3 stories to peruse! Ha ha ha ha ha.
The Count
I should have said a "newsworthy photo" and not a war photo.
Which one is the original - this or this.
The consensus on the BBS I found these at was that both are touched. Go figure.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
That I bet a few photographers miss Stalin.
Google doesn't index user sigs, so stop trying to "Google Bomb" with them.
Here is a link to the LA Times website that shows the photos in question.
One columnist from theregister.com claimed, "You can tell we're for real because of all teh typos."
I remember at the beginning of this war, we were seeing a lot of photos shot from suspicious angles. One of them some of you have probably seen.. it features a soldier, in the foreground, and two little kids in the background. From where it is shot, it looks exactly like he has the rifle trained on these poor kids heads, but if you stop and look at it for a while, you realize its just the way the sling has it hanging against his body.
Being an amateur photographer, I can tell you that a good SLR lets you do things with perspective and for/background (using fstops and really good lighting and film conditions) that a digital really doesnt do. One is really really blur the distinction between "near" and "far" in a photo. (Stopping the lens down really really far allows the background stuff to be just as "in focus" as the near-ground.. so you lose that whole "main object crisp everything else fuzzy" image type.)
Since I started taking pictures, I pay a lot more attention to how the shot was taken!
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
I searched hard for the "duplicate civilian". I think is the guy squatting on the left. Immediately to the right of soldier's knee is that same squatted image. Unless there's something else I'm missing..
You crazy man? You piss off supahfly!
Photography is already biased enough depending on what you LEAVE OUT of the photo, or how you juxtapose certain elements, or use telephoto to change the size-distance ratio of objects. Use a long enough lens, and it looks like the kid running across the street is about to be bowled over by the tank, when in fact the tank is a block away.
Anything other than news photos and it's fair game.
I looked for 20 minutes and I couldn't find him anywhere!
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-edn ote_blurb.blurb
More interesting than reading about them
How many such "improved compositions" has this photomangler published that didn't have repeated background elements giving it away?
An aside, did the image first pass examination because the editor thinks "all Iraqis look the same"? It's pretty obvious that the same faces appear more than once.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Sure, messing with a news photo is a grey area, since news should convey the truth, and by altering the photograph, you are altering the truth.
In defense I would say that protographing is an art, and using photo-editing tools to make your picture better is also "acceptable" if you could go just around the corner and shot the exact same picture by accident. Of course the photographer wished to rule out the chance-aspect and edited the image to convey the "feeling" of the moment better.
And of course there's the old adage: He got caught. He did a crappy photo-edit. If he did a good job he wouldn't get caught with it, and we'd be happily on our way believing everything we see in a newspaper. (insert conspiracy theories, the illuminati and whatnot (yes, I have been playing Deus Ex again, so I'm in that whole conspiracy mood... yum)).
Okay, so he broke a newspaper's rules and was fired. So what? He adjusted the photo for composition; that is quite different than adjusting for content.
Just like taking two photos and stiching them together to get a wider shot. Sure, it may not be an exact pixel-for-pixel representation of reality, but I wouldn't call it deception.
This is definately Stuff That DOESN'T Matter
...that in a free country with a free press, editors are willing to print corrections, and in many cases apologies, for such transgressions.
A loss of objectivity for the sake of art!!! Poor fool.
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-edn ote_blurb.blurb
Without the magically appearing space
"Slashdot has done several stories on unnoticeable digital alterations; here's 1, 2, 3 old stories to peruse."
But, but! How do we know they haven't been digitally altered?
But, it raises the spectre of wondering how many other photographs have been altered in the past, and we just didn't know about them. Hopefully this isn't a widespread practice at the Times or any other paper.
Sure, the "meaning" of the photograph(s) in question wasn't tremendously altered, but who's to say others in the past haven't been or ones in the future will be?
Firing the guy immediately was the right thing for the Times to do.
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-edn ote_blurb.blurb
... in the newspaper's policy.
What's the big deal? I would get fired if I were to come into work drunk, or violate any other "specifically barred policies".
On a side note, digital (and regular) modifications are the rule rather than the exception for photographers. They take inches off of those models legs, add this, remove that. One interesting trick is that they dilate the pupils of models to make them look sexier. Am I missing the importance of this?
That's not a paraphrase of Pink Floyd, it's a direct quote. Of course, the news media aren't the government... they're just in-bed-ed with them.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
they photoshoped the heads of wiesels onto the bodies of the french and german government. photoshop has no place in news gathering.
That should be to quote Pink Floyd.
This link was included in the original story writeup. No karma whoring!
Yes, the modifications were mostly compositional, but there is a *very good reason* for the L.A. Times banning the alteration of photos: because once you do it, the only difference between minor compositional alterations and ones that change the content in more significant ways is *just a matter of degree*. In other words, once you cross that threshold, the amount of alteration or significance of the alteration that is permissible is only a matter of judgement, a moving line in the sand. Banning such alteration of photographs outright shows good judgement by the publisher and demonstrates their commitment against the falsification of photographic evidence.
Of course, this does nothing to prevent completely staged photographs, but at least it's something.
Use a long enough lens, and it looks like the kid running across the street is about to be bowled over by the tank, when in fact the tank is a block away.
Hey, is that where that quasi-famous "child and tank" photo from Israel came from? They've been putting that on t-shirts, bags of chips, mugs, the works.
Any links to web pages dissecting the photo? That'd make an interesting read.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I think the real problem with the unannounced altering of photos is that it has the ability to alter the meaning of a situation. I'm somewhat amazed at any discussion that argues that this is alright to do in any way, such as when the alteration does not change the fundamental nature of the shot.
The danger in allowing such discussion to breed is that it opens photographs to subjectivity. The editors alter photos to make them more dramatic, create more of an impact. But they are forging an image that did not exist in reality!
Altering photographs without providing a notice to the viewers allows the editors to become part of the story, enhancing and molding it, providing their own subliminal opinion, rather than reporting on it and allowing the reader to make up their own judgement. It's my opinion that media opinion and prejudice is already pervasive in news reporting worldwide, not just in the U.S. media.
We do not need any more opinions in our news, especially when those opinions are disguised as fact. If the situation wasn't dramatic enough, then it doesn't deserve to be 'pumped up' for our modern senses.
Almost all commercial photography is touched up in some way. Almost any stripmall photography place will touch up photographs to remove skin blemishes and artifacts in the picture, for a price. However, there is a big difference between altering a model pose where you're buying the perfect look, and a news photo where you're buying (supposively) unbiased fact.
A local newspaper had a similar problem with this a few years back. They were doing a story on teenage drug use in schools and used as a picture, the photograph of a girl bent over into her locker, snorting something. The photograph was a posed one, and was identified as such in the fine print of the article, but enough people got outraged, thinking that it was so prevalant that a roving news crew was able to catch such an event, taking place so casually. This gave the impression of the problem seeming worse than it actually was.
However, for news organizations, if they're going to modify images, make it obvious. Nobody gets upset about a collage mix of multiple images to represent a theme. But if the resulting image is represented as a single snapshot in time, you start to cross ethical boundaries.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
You really think you'll get karma by repeating the 2nd link of the slashdot writeup?
Doctoring the photo was mildly misinforming. Strange that the standards for seemingly minor misinformation in photos are so high while the standards for far worse examples of print misinformation are nonexistent. For example, did anyone get fired at the Times for reporting that the coalition forces had captured an entire Iraqi infantry division on day 1? What about the chemical weapons factory that was supposed to have been captured on day 4? Or what about all of the stories about the supposed 'SCUD' missiles that Iraq launched on Iraq? All of these stories were blatantly false and yet millions of Americans probably believe they were true...thanks to the misinformation printed by the Times and other American media outlets.
Another example: During his "State of the Union" speech, President Bush referred to 'aluminum tubes' that Iraq was supposedly trying to obtain from some source in Africa for use in constructing nuclear weapons. He then used this information to suggest that nuclear weapons could be used against American cities. Of course, this was also later shown to be completely false by nuclear weapons experts at Lawrence Livermore laboratories in California who pointed out that the 'aluminum tubes' had no use in constructing a nuclear weapon. It was not misinformation by the Times to report what Bush said in his speech (although it was by Bush) but it was a form of misinformation for the Times to then not challenge and correct the mistaken impressions left by President Bush when better factual information became available. The editors at the Times are a colossal bunch of hypocrites. They might as well admit that their standards of reporting on Iraq in the last few months of reporting are little different from Hitler's propaganda rags in the 1930s or the former USSR's Pravda from the 1970s.
...there is a ongoing investigation in the adult entertainment business as to allegations of doctored photos.
Said one prominent director : "I know that bitch had a mole on her ass!"
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
Like this current War and Peace 3 contest. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
As a former journalism student and someone who has been in print a few times in High School and College, I think I can say what part of the Big Deal is.
Journalism is supposed to be accurate and unbiased. In practice this rarely happens, but the theory is there. The paper has a policy forbidding the modifying of photos, and they enforce it.
It's similar to the honor code many schools use. Cheating only hurts the student in the long run, but it can still get them kicked out of the school.
The point is the moral and ethical code. Journalists have a moral imperative to report the truth, and any modification, any stretching of the truth is a step down a slippery slope towards outright lies and falsehoods.
The photographer was fired for good reason. A modified photo is fine as a piece of "art" but as journalism it brings the entire publication's integrity and honesty into question.
I could go on, but my hope is that the majority of the people reading this thread realize that what the photographer did was a violation. It's not like photoshopping a playboy shoot to remove a pimple. This is falsifying the news. It's a small fake, a minor tweak, but it's still presenting falsehood as reality.
And before you make a wise ass reply about the fallacy of journalistic integrity in the real world, keep in mind, I did say "In practice this rarely happens".
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Photography is already biased enough depending on what you LEAVE OUT
Or inversly, what you LEAVE IN. I personally find TV other mass media "news", not to be very newsworthy.
Does everyone remember last summer when the media made a big deal of a couple of kids missing? Granted, if I were involved in such a thing, it would probably be the worst thing to ever happen in my life, but every day I see photos in my mailbox and on milk cartons about missing kids. This wasn't news, nor is much of the other FUD that the media spreads.
I understand the need for the public to be presented with the real deal when it comes to news. But, this sort of stuff has been going on for a while. I'm surprised this gained any sort of public notice.
Some of the pictures of 9/11 were doctored. Pictures of public figures are often doctored. (I mean, do you think that every woman who poses in front of the camera has the same Barbie-Dollish figure?) God knows so many advertisements are doctored.
Star Pirates
Here are the 3 photos Side by Side.
The pictures combine a photo of an army soldier with gun raised warning the crowd about something happening off camera (with everone looking away from the soldier), with a photo of the same solder talking to the crowd gun lowered (and everyone looking at him).
The combined photo has the soldier with the gun raised and everyone looking at him, which makes it appear that the soldier is threatening the crowd with his weapon. The entire context of the image has changed, from the US helping to the US threatening.
Wait, if this is fake, then is it possible that Bert is not evil?!
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
I can't see why walski did it. My question is, was it photoshopped for pro or anti war?
Competition in America: If you can't beat 'em, Sue 'em!
I like how the LAPD verrsion of that OJ mugshot has "TIME" on it too. I didn't realize they did that... :)
This happens more often than you think. Hopefully not for journalistic photos, mind you. But advertisers modify pictures all the time. Or did you really think that models always have perfect skin? Thank you, smudge tool!
I recently did some work for a friend who is putting on a play (shameless plug, if you live in San Francisco, go see "Shirley Mental") and she had taken some publicity photos. Unfortunately, none of them were perfect, so she had me combine the background from one with actors in another, and in another case remove a third actor from a shot to more prominently feature two others.
For journalistic photos, though, it would be unethical. Oddly enough, simply cropping an unacceptable bit out of a photo would probably be considered okay with most papers. Adding things is a definite no-no.
I can understand how a journalist could forget that though, considering how easy it is to modify photos. In many cases, it wouldn't matter, but a newspaper simply can't afford to be seen as making things up. They can't have people questioning whether what they see in a paper is real or not.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It changes reality, perhaps in a trivial way, or perhaps in a more significant way. Either way, it should not be done.
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
I think most of the controversy regarding the Time magazine cover of OJ simpson that was glanced at in the article wasn't about making him look more evil.
People were angered by the fact that Time magazine had made a deliberate attempt to darken OJ's face. Essentially to make him look "blacker". OJ was a really considered an American hero before the trial and he's a relatively light-skinned african-american. Thus critics believed that Time's darkening of his face on their magazine cover was both an attempt to make him look less like the whitebread hero OJ, and more like the black criminal OJ. If anyone else has additional info regarding this matter please chip in
Digital manipulation (as opposed to interpretation, like dodging, burning, tonal adjustments and color correction) only makes what was previously possible with film,basic tools and an enlarger easier. What we're seeing in the Times' photograph was possible long before the widespread use of digital cameras by photojournalists, and even before the advent of digital photographic retouching.
Digital photography only makes this sort of visual slight-of-hand easier - but that doesn't stop the person in the street from mistrusting the method used to capture and deliver the photograph instead of laying blame at the feet of the photojounalist who chose to misuse the tools he was provided with.
There aren't any easy solutions to this problem. Photojournalism is so competitive these days that I'm not surprised some unscrupulous person chose to combine the elements of two photographs for a more dramatic impression.
It's just as wrong to try to sell this image, no matter what the competitive environment, but I wish it weren't seen as being caused by digital photography, instead of what it really is - an artifact of photography itself made easier with digital technology.
Should I trust the media...
Basically you are fear mongering with this. Yes, he shouldn't have modified the picture, but I seriously doubt there was an executive order to modify the picture.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Are we looking at the same picture? The feeling I got was that the "drama" of the image was heightened because it looked like the soldier was activily motioning for the father and son to take cover. And it does not look like the soldier is making a threat, but is actually less of a threat because he is not pointing his weapon at them like it appears he might be doing in the second original image.
While the danger level of the situation may have been hightened by this image manipulation, the increased danger was not coming from the soldier, but from the increased urgency of the body postures and implied interactions.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Christ, this war could use some more interesting stuff to look at, the pixelated "live" video of an APC driving through the desert has grown old!
The Post gravely insulted weasels by doing that.
Every camera sold can have internal circuitry to take the CCD image and perform an MD5 hash of the pic. The MD5 hash would then be XOR'd with a one-time-pad. The OTP would be burned into the camera at the factory and would be inaccessable from outside the camera CPU. The OTP would then be databased (also inaccessibly) into the grand federal OTP camera registry database. The OTP having been XOR'd with the MD5 hash of the pic, would then be put into the pic filename. Now, whenever someone wants to check to see if the picture has been unaltered they just have to go to the federal camera database website and submit the picture. The backend will then validate the pic.
Will it be done? Not in your lifetime.
+2 cents contributed.
National Geographic altered an Egyption pirymid cover photo to fit more into the scene. They appoligized IIRC.
Only after the altered photo appeared Monday did editors notice that some civilians in the background appeared twice, the Times said.
The good photographers probably get away with it, not leaving in duplicates. Either that, Saddam is doing Cloning of Mass Destruction.
Table-ized A.I.
Not like the tabloids dont do that. "Enhance *click*click*click*. Enhance *click*click*click*."
In the original, both the soldier and the guy with the kid are looking to the side. In the one where the guy is looking at the soldier, the soldier is talking to someone on a headset...
Only in the combined photo do you get a guy pleading with the soldier while the solder threatens him to stand back (though that's sort of what is going on in the first photo, it's not as dramatic).
Anytime you increase or decrease the level of emotion in a photograph, that is deception... of course you can even do that to some extent with framing a depth of field adjustments, but to just hack apart a picture to generate whatever impact you like is deceptive in my book.
I guess the real question is - was the manipulation done to more accurately portray what was happening? Or just for impact? If it was to increase accuracy I think it would be OK, although who can verify it's more accurate other than the people who were there? That's why it's just better to say "no manipulation, period".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can seem to find the duplication anywhere in the combined pictures. But, I was never any good at those Where's Waldo books or the Magic Eye thing for that matter.
Anyone find the dup?
come on fhqwhgads
Any newspaper worth a damn beats the drum LOUDLY that you shoot what you shoot. Most people that can't shoot worth a damn don't give a damn enough to doctor their images.
Cropping, some digital dodging and burning, some sharpening, etc. as LONG AS IT DOESN'T ALTER THE MESSAGE is acceptable.
The photo community rips people to shreds if you altered your image in any noticable way.
Also, an integrity check against this is there are, on any assignment of significance, multiple news sources at the location, to alter what happened by cropping out someone/thing quickly become pointless if your competition all tells the story a different way.
Photographers also spend a LOT of time in photoshop so they are keenly aware of the tricks and the telltale signs. Or conversely simply upload their images via mobile or sat phone and have the techs sharpen the image a bit etc.
Photographers are the people who argue about shooting "the decisive moment" and whether it's legit to use a motor drive. You're considered a child if you doctor your images.
Also any photojournalist worth a damn doesn't even open the window shades to allow more light. Also, leading the subject is highly frowned upon.
Heil Sig! -Rob
Remember this? The makers of Spider-Man imposed advertisements for companies including Cingular Wireless ("can you see me now? Good!") over genuine Times Square ads for companies like NBC and Samsung. Constitutionally protected, mate!
Regardless of whether that's legal, dodgy, or whatever, it's entirely different from manipulating the news. Journalists seem to forget what journalism actually is these days, and instead desperately want to be thought of as intellectually-astute commentators, while this photographer apparently would prefer to be a starving artist rather than an unbiased "just the facts, ma'am" news photographer. Silly sods. I so loathe the media.
Frank Hurley was the photographer on Shackleton's ill-fated (but survivable) journey to the Antarctic. He later went on to be an official Australian WW1 and WW2 photographer. He was well known for his altering of photographs to improve the composition. Some of these altered photos are prominantly displayed in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. He never got sacked for it!
Unless, of course, you work for The Onion, which has a license to parody.
(Although I trust their insight more than CNNs...)
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Happy?
I forgot just where I saw it. It featured Admiral Ackbar in full Arab regalia. The caption mentioned something about a trap. It was probably just a local pointing out a mine field. It was clearly bogus. Everyone knows Heraldo is the only large-beaked alien over there.
..simply by changing the caption.
Consider the doctored photo in this instance. First put a masthead above saying LIBERATED and then caption Coalition forces save civilians from Republican Guard reprisals
Then put LEFT TO DIE as your masthead and caption A British soldier stops this child receiving urgent medical attention.
Both are complete fictions, and both say polar opposites.
"Believe nothing of what you hear, and half of what you see."
in this day and age. Politics and media of all types are so inter-woven that one acts one behalf of the other.
George Orwell says it the best when he said:
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act."
If you think CNN/FOX/MSNBC or any other news source are telling it like it is, you are one naive puppy. Its not information they feed you. Its disinformation. Think very carefully about anything you read, see or hear in media (print or tv). If they control your thought, they control you. Learn to question/discuss everything your government or its PR tells you. After all, they are there for you and they've been put in power by you.
The times 'reporting' of the conflict thus far has been completely one sided, they dont seem to have any problem whatsoever blending editorial pages and news headlines. Day after day of tripe about how terrible the war effort is going, and how 'fierce' the resistance is. Their motives are painfully obvious - the outcome of the war isnt in doubt, but they want to make sure Bush looks bad come election time.
If the altered photo made the coalition look bad, I'm positive they wouldnt have fired the guy.
I don't care if your for or against the war. If I come to you as a news orginization, I'm coming for facts and information, and not your politics or opinions. That's what the Op ed page is for.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If you search for "Brian Walski" on the LA Times website you can find the article and the pictures. Normally a free registration is required but it appears this page with the pictures is not protected.
A bank employee was fired for combining his account with that of a customer with a much higher balance.
When asked about the reason for his actions he simply stated that the combined balanced looked much more dramatic on his bank statements.
You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!
or use telephoto to change the size-distance ratio of objects.
Well in this photograph the computer was used to make the U.S. soldier look insanely larger than the mouse-sized Iraqis. While I understand the symbolism of shepard and sheep that the photographer was aiming for, it's extremely unethical to alter a photograph in this way, imposing artificial symbolism, and then presenting it to the public as factual news.
In the actual photograph, the soldier looks the same size as the citizens, human to human. In news, truth is infinitely better than someone's fantasy wish for what the image should be.
i thought there was going to be some great tragression or something. NOT!!!!!
....
e dn ote_blurb.blurb
all 3 photos are innocuous
here's all the photos
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-
Make sure that you don't believe the media or the government or [insert evil thing here] - until you get balanced, or corroborating info. Blindly believing anything you are told is dangerous. Blind faith is still blind. Read Arab news, American news, and European news - try to find the real truth that you can't get from one source but is in all sources.
and he had done the goatse pic. I knew that wasn't physiologically possible!!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
In the altered montage: the man motioning with his hand has an assault rifle; the man being motioned to has a child and is beginning to crouch, as if in obeyance. Most definitely the altered image heightens the drama--one wonders "will the soldier shoot the man if he doesn't sit?"
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Holding your hand out towards someone who is lookig directly at you while you are holding an automatic weapon is NOT going to be interperted as being "helpful" or telling anyone to "take cover". It looks like a "sit your ass down" gesture to me.
And this is the real problem. That photo never happened. Now we have to decide what a situation that never actually happened means to different people. Isn't conveying ACTUAL events hard and easily skewed enough by what is shown/not shown and what is said/not said that we don't need digital manipulation on top of it?
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
I like how the LAPD verrsion of that OJ mugshot has "TIME" on it too.
Often times such cameras are set up for "average" skin tones. Pale people will look more pale and dark-skinned people will look even more dark. I see a lot of ID badges with this problem. This is often not necessarily intentional, just bad equipment, bad settings, and/or unskilled camera operators.
Further, what is "right" is often subjective. If dark or light skin was "in", then people might be more inclined to pick an adjustment range that looks the "best". There is no such thing as a "right" setting because paper has a limited brightness range, whereas the real world does not (except maybe for quantum theory-predicted limits, which is another matter).
I am surprised there are not more civil-rights lawsuits over ID badge problems. I have seen a lot of badly done images of certain ethnic groups.
Table-ized A.I.
Miss Stalin: My hobbies include horseback riding, walking on the beach, and singing in my church choir. If I become Miss World, I'll make sure everyone gets a bag of Doritos.
Thank You.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
he's a R*E*T*A*R*D with a 5 second attention span
If you have a copy of the mag sitting around, please look at the photo and tell me if you agree.
I find it sickening that a supposedly respectable publication would edit historical photographs for the sake of modern political correctness. We wouldn't want our young kids learning that, way back during the Depression, people smoked cigarettes, would we?
Yeah, journalistic integrity. Yip skip.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Unspoken but obvious is the motive behind the "improved composition" -- the altered image depicts a coalition soldier motioning threateningly to a father holding his young son.
Interesting - I saw it in exactly the opposite light.
In the first original photo, it's not terribly obvious that the man is carrying a young child; it just looks like the soldier motioning to some guy.
In the second original, it's clear that the man is carrying a young child, but now the soldier looks like he's pointing a gun at him rather than just motioning him.
Thus, the original images are either "motioning some guy" or "pointing a gun at a man with a young child". The altered image is "motioning a man with a young child". Thus the altered image seems much more "sympathetic" to the soldier than either of the originals alone.
(Note that I'm not suggesting that the altered image doesn't reflect the facts of what happened - indeed, it looks like it was altered to better reflect what actually happened, since neither real photo seems to have captured that very well (assuming the soldier wasn't really pointing the gun at the little kid)... All I'm suggesting is that the apparent effect of the modification for me was the exact opposite of what you suggested it was)
If you were paraphrasing Pink Floyd it would have been something like "Ought I to have faith in the government, mom?"
-- -Keith
Standing in a blasted landscape trying to thumb a lift back to Kuwait.
Bad for the paper in the short run,
Good for the society's long term integrity, especially when fiction is so easy to do; the only reason he was caught was that he was lame and had duplication in the photo.
Oprah's head on Ann-Margret's body. It is from 1980 I think.
http://www.uturn.org/Fingering/opra.jpg
Towards the end of last year Circuit City turned a very funky couple into a very normal couple. I bet the person that did it there got a raise for removing that gender bending couple from the ads!
Check out the scans.
Damn you! Damn you all to hell!
The guy should go work at playboy. They do that kind of thing all the time. When was the last time you saw a playmate with scars from chicken pox or immunizations? They've been airbrushing their photos as long as airbrushing has been around. Now if they started trying to post a a head on a different body people might start to notice, which parallels with this guy's merging of two photos for a single, better picture. Sure it might be selling something that isn't real, but how boring is reality?
It's an Isreali tank and (presumably) a palestinian kid.
Look behind and infront of the knees of the gunman
And it does not look like the soldier is making a threat, but is actually less of a threat because he is not pointing his weapon at them like it appears he might be doing in the second original image.
Or (this being the LA Times) "STAY BACK! SIT YOUR ASS DOWN!"
Notice how the sky appears altered as well. Slightly darker in the top right, and a slightly more pronounced 'halo' just above the civilians.
Canon offers a "Data Verification Kit" for its EOS-1Ds camera. The mechanism isn't as elaborate as you describe (with government registries and the like), but it does seem to employ some sort of digital signature mechanism.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Some newspapers rely on their cover picture to generate the bulk of sales (NY Post in particular). I mean, the type that catches your eye on the sidewalk going to work. That cover is therefore the paper's main advertisement. Since the paper reports on news in both writing and pictures, when the cover photo for such a newspaper is adulterated, can you then trust the content? Although there were many witnesses, no one actually took a picture of Clinton shaking hands with Castro.
Thankfully, there was a heavy amount of criticism soon after. But unfortunately, it either means that mass media outlets understand that the public won't tolerate it, OR all of mass media uses the example as precident and call adulterations "illustrations".
IMO, the "illustration" would have been fine within the boundaries of an editorial section.
This is not my sig.
Why the comment about trusting the government when the story is not about the government?
the photographer has been hired by the Iraqi Government to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal photographer.
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
DUH! That question should be .. where ISN'T it happening, like duh .. of course it is!
LA Times - A lot of us call them the LA Crimes.
Can't trust their reporting, NOW you can't trust the photos!
example: ..
LA Times promoting the banning of "Assault Weapons" - when in fact they mean semi-automatic firearms WHICH LOOK like assault weapons
example LA times art.
Assault weapon definition
which has resulted in Olympic Pistols being declared illegal in California (because the magazine is IN front of the pistol grip)
here's an example of an attempt to make Olympic Pistols once again LEGAL in CA. (I don't know the results of the attempt) ab2351
more ..4 916.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021115-8249
NOW, given this is something I KNOW about, it makes me question the OTHER stuff the LA Times spews that I DON'T know about.
You have no idea what you are talking about, just shut up.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
to make the U.S. soldier
US soldier? Nope, try British. A US serviceman would be carrying an M-16 (the shape of the rifle was the first thing that tipped me off); the color pattern on his BDUs is wrong as well. Furthermore, if there was any doubt, the story specifically mentions that the photo was of a British soldier.
RTFA.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
The stories can be completely false, opinionated and biased.. but we don't worry about that.. why in the hell would we worry about modified photos? I say buyer beware.. if you like to read that kind of media.. be aware of what your buying - the text is definately more harmful and powerful than any photos can be.
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
Sorry, a photograph, as in silver nitrate can be manipulated in the dark-room so why is anyone suprised about digital manipulation. The only difference is the process is faster and less smelly.
As regards journalisitic integrity, I'm sorry but there is none. Most journalists give the reports that their employers want, i.e. "Is there anyone here who has been raped who speaks English?". Of course they only tell the truth but it is a keyhole view of the truth. Both the original photo and the presentation can change the perceived meaning 100%.
I don't believe my ears.
From what I see is that you are all advocating the faking of a photo for publication.
Sense Nikon and Canon came out with their professional Digital Cameras, and the improvements in PhotoShop 6 & 7, photographers have had the ability to make a photo that never happened.
To a newspaper altering a photo is the same as a reporter writing a faults statement about an event that never happened.
Yes new papers will retouch a photo, make the background darker or lighter, but NEVER add elements to the photo that was not in the photo originally.
To say that it is ok to manipulate a photograph so it depicts the event differently is a photographic lie.
Firing that photographer was the right thing and I support the LA Times in their decision.
I being a news photographer have been moving back to shooting film because that editors are questioning the originality of the photos.
When my images are presented, so are my negs. The editor will compare and see that the photo is original and I will get published. No Negative, No Publication, that simple.
I am now seeing more newspapers going back to shooting film just for that reason alone.
I can talk for hours on this matter, but I wont.
Paul
of course if you go to this page and scroll down to "Photographer Fired For Digitally Altering Photo" there is also a link to the pictures, which requires no registration.
Go fuck yourself.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
If media corporation are really woried about the integrity of a digital image over a film based one, they should just take a view at the Raw file from the camera (maybe journalist should be required to whoot only in raw...) which is difficult to modify, compared to a simple jpeg as it is simply a pixel dump of the sensor
Or maybe the camera itself should provide a MD5 hash or something like that with each picture so you can verify the integrity of it?
Just my 2 cents...
I'd rather be sailing...
If everyone is lying?
I for one don't think everyone is lying. I think you can use news.google.com along with bits and pieces of fox news to generate your own idea of the truth. If you have a logical bone in your body, you can sift through the BS. Apparently hundreds of protesters nationwide don't have this.
~ now you know
I suppose your going to tell me that this photo is fake too.
Altering a picture alters the meaning of the picture, not just its visual qualities.
The LA Times is 100% correct to ban this sort of manipulation in news photos. Front pages of newspapers are history, not entertainment.
Analog photos can be altered too. One is by setting lighting and degree of focusing. The NY Times Sunday magazine uses portrait photos with harsh lighting- wrinkles, acne scars, blush marks, become pronounced. This the opposite of "air brushing" or softening frequently done in yearbook and wedding photos. I find these harshened portraits interesting.
The color of photos can be changed too. "Fuji-izing" is brightening hues beyond reality. Home photographers think this makes better pictures. At least one major film vendor builds this into their film.
An interesting controversy about eight years ago was a NY Times magazine piece on OJ Simpson. Readers complained his cover photo was darker than reality, making look like an African menance.
He should also be fired for his non-leet PS skillz. That altered photo is very obvious...
"Models that appear in this magazine may have certain features enhanced or exagerated. The pictures in this magazine should be construed as fantasy imagery only."
The layout department for Sports Illustrated was on I think the "Best Damn Sports Show Period" saying that most of the swimsuit models legs are elongated and breast "bubbled" after the shoot with PowerBook G4s on spot and then further at headquarters. He made a joke saying that Niki Taylor was so short and they wanted her on a two page wide spread. So, they lengthened her legs. If she were real, she'd me Yao Ming's sister!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
It looks like its that Israeli tank, but with the reactive armor I can't tell for sure.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
unless it's with my own eyes, and then I'm not too sure of the source. You think this isn't pervasive?
The practice of *reporting* has long since passed, everyone in the 'news' industry is now a commentator.
A report, REPORTS, does NOT comment.. but on national TV and newspapers they do..
So they now doctor the 'facts' too, no news there..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
..."An aside, did the image first pass examination because the editor thinks "all Iraqis look the same"? It's pretty obvious that the same faces appear more than once.
"...
Are you an idiot? Maybe _you_ think they all look the same, and that is why you see so many duplicates. There is exactly _one_ duplicate, and it is not of a face.
The two original pictures are of exactly the same crowd, from a difference of about 45 degrees. The duplicate is of a man's back...
In the doctored photo, the curved back of a man wearing a white shirt can be seen next to the right of the soldier's leg. Now, look to the left of the soldier... see the man wearing the red scarf around his neck? that is the same man's back from before.
This dude is in the middle of a war in Iraq and just got fired. How the hell is he going to get home!
-Nuke the moon
it's a limey, not a gringo.
I saw a documentary on how National Geographic processes their photos. It seems that they do edit the photos digitally to make it look better.. for example, removing certain obstacles and replacing them with the natural background.
Scientology has been caught retro-doctoring photos Stalin style to remove people after they've fallen out of favour, like Reed Slatkin who's in big trouble for a long-running investment ponzi scam.
I hope the press has better ethics than Scientology.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Paul McCartney's cigarette on the Abbey Road cover has been removed.
Here we go. It's a freaking newspaper. I like how you associate this with the government. I thought you geeks were supposed to be smart?
- Bill Oriely
Now if they fire a photographer for doctoring the truth, why do they fire a reporter for telling the truth?
The article doesn't mention what alterations were made. As someone with an avid interest in photography, I'm wondering if they went overboard in firing him or not.
Particularly with digital photography, it's common to alter photos. Not to, say, put a tank in a picture when one wasn't there, but to apply an unsharp mask to correct the blur, and tweak the contrast a little.
Plus, with 'challenging' photos in terms of lighting, it's common to take pictures exposed for different things: In one photo, the sunset is designed to look perfect, and in the next one, you instead meter for the ground, and then merge them afterward -- not always to 'change' things, but rather to make them closer to the way they were in real life, but that the camera's dynamic range couldn't accurately capture.
Granted, the mention of some people being in the photo twice makes it seem as if the alterations might have been more than simply adjusting the color tone or whatnot, but I think they should mention just what was changed. (Does anyone have a link to the actual pictures?)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Famous Physicists
This lobster was alive when it hit the frothy, boiling water.
I know there is a substantial difference between theory and practice. The point is that in theory, Journalism is supposed to be the pursuit and reporting of the truth without apology.
In practice, that noble concept is generally parroted by skevy reporters trying to hide a questionable source during a libel trial.
I don't really see how the ease with which a photo can be manipulated has anything to do with it. It's always been true that creating false witnesses and misleading photographs has been possible, even easy. The Spanish - American war happened largely because Hearst drummed up support with fictional accounts of Spanish atrocities.
The point is, you're not supposed to do it. It's an ideal that we're supposed to have. Journalism is supposed to be about the truth.
Is the newspaper in question rife with bias? Probably. Most of them are.
Do most Photo Journalists frame their photos to get the impact they want? Of course.
Are the available facts worded and framed to create the message that the author intends? Yes.
Is the noble concept of Journalistic Integrity ever seen in practice? In isolated cases, I'm sure it has.
But falsifying a photographs is against the code. It's wrong. It's not the same thing as choosing to ignore certain sources, or kneeling to get an angle you want in the shot. It's the same thing as making up quotes, or even creating witnesses from scratch. It's too far beyond simply having a bias and reporting what you want to report, it's reporting what just isn't so.
Is stealing a candy bar from CVS easy? Yes it is. Is modifying a picture for publication as news easy? Yes it is. Are they both wrong? Yes they are.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Those Playmate Turn-On blurbs are probably fake, too.
Oh, and so are her tits.
-kgj
A picture is not "news". A photograph is not "the truth." Fooling around with an image is not at all the same issue as inaccurate reporting- the slippery-slope fear is a stretch.
I don't think you can imagine a doctored photo that would lead to actual misrepresentation of the truth without the support of a fake story alongside it. Boy, that's strange, you say, I never noticed that F15 crashing into the Shuttle upon re-entry. Doesn't somebody actually need to write the headline "F15 Destroys Shuttle" before the funky photo is of any consequence? Honestly, if you read the comments above, it's clear that photos convey few facts. Some see the soldier in the doctored photograph as "threatening," some see him 'being listened to.' All we really know without a text alongside is that a guy in camouflage was near a bunch of seated people. It's not like the photo is being used to invalidate the widely-held belief that there are no twins in Iraq.
While there's no reason to be pro-faked-photo, I'm struggling to understand the objections, given that a million fake photos seem to have no impact without written lies to boot. Sure, you could fake a photo of me going into a strip club and print it on the front page without comment, but I'd own the paper within the week.
Heh, wacky. The site suggests that OJ looked more guilty because the photo was darker. And then it goes on to say to question whether or not that was racial insensitivity because TIME was saying "blacker means guiltier". But NPAA.org is saying that, right there!
Wasn't there a scandal a few years ago regarding a National Geographic cover shot of the Pyramids that was altered?
I'd say that he wasn't neccessarily fired for editing the photo, but for doing a botched job of it. To me, when I looked at the pictures, the only major difference between the 2 were the posture of the soldier and the posture of the standing villager. If the guy had simply changed the position of the guy standing, there wouldn't have been duplicate villagers and no one would have been the wiser. Who knows how frequently something like that happens?
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
Wish I had points to mod that sumbitch UP. And wish I had a towel to wipe my keyboard clean of all the tequila that shot out my nose when I read that.
I seem to recall a front page of a magazine showing OJ's arrest picture that apparently had been darkened (I guess it was an attempt to make it more macabre{sp?})
Anyone know if that photgrapher or if an editor was fired or repremanded for that?
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
What surprises me is that when I googled Brian Walski, he turns up as having one several awards for his photo-journalism. This suggests two things to me: 1) He knew what he was doing, and 2) the Times knew what he was doing too and are punishing him for being too obvious.
As for the morality of what he did, I'm uncertain. If we think of his photo as being editorial, then all they would have to do is say that it had been altered. I'm not sure that the morality of his action is really as simple as black-and-white.
----------- Sig what?
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
--maybe not, but just in case, this is for the people here in other countries who might think it's all lock step goose steppers here based on those phony polls they run. I'm a "constitutionalist" now, well, call myself that, because those goons running the political show have sullied the term "conservative", I have been one for 4 decades (close) now, the difference is, I don't believe in murder, theft and crooked international business intrigue as a means to an end like the goons are doing now. Bill O'Reilly and goofballs like Michael Savage and gasbag Rush to psyops Limbaugh aren't real classic american conservatives. They are dangerous huckstering fascists, big time wrestling comes to news and commentary, paid off goons. They are part of whipping up the war and "terror" hysteria now in anticipation of the creation of the new Brownshirts, version 2.0., to go along with Patriot Act and Homeland Security and whatnot.
It's a junta, so I'll just call it that. Junta. And the brownshirts are coming, inevitable now.
The new (sorta) term for them is "neoconservative". That is too polite a term, IMO. I prefer fascist goons. Lying Thugs is good too. Real US conservatives are much more inclined to be isolationists/non interventionists when it comes to foreign military adventures, it's just now, with neocon fascists "in power" in the administration, they have hijacked the term "conservative". And there's a large percentage of the population, not a majority by any means but still large, who don't have much public voice, but are both conservative, patriotic, non war mongering, and aren't faked out by those goons, they just aren't in any leadership positions in the R party because they aren't crooks, and they certainly are in the minority in the mainstream US broadcast media, which now is a blend of neocon and naieve-brand liberalism. Sad but true. There is no "classical" Liberalism (which is a decent philosophy, more similar to what is called Libertarianism now) nor Old Fashioned conservatism or "paleoconservativism" (again, decent, different but still decent, tending to more protectionism,less "foreign entanglements", much smaller government, etc) represented, except mostly on the net and on shortwave and on forums.
With that said,politics aside, the photo altering story is a good headsup, along with the news anchors using phony backdrops and other sorts of digital altering techniques. Remember the bushgoon puppet-in-chief in front of the phony backdrop painted to look like "made in america" crates of product? That was another photo/video propaganda psyops move. I imagine some arabic sites and europaen sites are doing similar, too, it's just too easy to fake stuff now.
What's the quote? "In war, the truth is the first victim"
The photos are starting to be fake, the text has been highly altered and spun, constantly. All you need to do is use google news, pick any breaking story, look at a half dozen different versions of it from around the world. Altering just a few words and adding in a few choice trigger buzz words can spin the same exact story in several different directions. Example, this works both ways, from either side, just some examples on how this war gets reported: The "enemy" doesn't have "soldiers" they have "terrorists". The "badguys" are cheating and doing sneaky things that are "warcrimes", the "good guys" use special operations or commando techniques and pull off "specatacular and brave and daring raids".
And stuff like that there.
When I am reading the "war news" now, I take the very highs and the very lows from all the sources, and throw them away, then average the middle, that is most likely the closest to any sort of "truth" being reported.
This is something which confused me last month:
ZDF (2nd state owned German TV) removed signs on a door plate.
Google has a fair enogh translation of this.
Having worked for both USA Today and washingtonpost.com, I can tell you that know responsible news organization would tolerate this kind of behavior. Most have very explicit standing policies against digitally altering photos for publication with severe consequences (including termination) for violation of the policy.
While this seems a pretty clear cut violation, there is also some room for debate as to the proper role of Photoshop. Is cropping for presentation acceptable? Color correction? Graphical overlays (to point out characteristics of the photo or enhance the nformation value)? How about masking out someone who's permission you couldn't get for the photo?
Remember that the key asset of any news organization is the public's trust that they are reporting the "facts". While there is no real expectation of complete objectivity, altering the truth the fit your perspective will always be unacceptable. When you alter a photograph with the intent of changing it's meaning (even if it supports the other facts in the story), it erodes that trust.
It's great to see a newpaper outlet acting like the truth matters.
Now if only Nike and Fox felt the same way.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
It's a Palestinian boy throwing a rock at an Israeli tank. It happens all the time, and it is hardly news. It's certainly not worth forging to discredit the Israelis, or the US, since anyone looking for propaganda photos to use for that purpose can find thousands of real photos that make much more devastating political points than "Israel is so mean that Palestinian boys throw rocks at their tanks."
Yes, this is where I get my information regarding Christie. I still think she's hot, though.
The real point that is great here is the bit about the trivial skill. Cracking a computer system is tough, but if you walk by your bosses computer and someone's performance eval is on the screen for you to read, it's much more likely that you will than if you had to break in to do it.
"Color correction?" As long as you don't make OJ darker!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Here is another altered image from iraq. Photo
Okay, there have been several comments on this so far but I feel obligated to chime in since digital photo enhancement/adjustment/manipulation is part of my occupation.
The photo, with the boy, is real. Dispite the fact that the selective discoloration appears to be conveniently placed on the tank directly behind him, those things do happen in photography. All the shadows match the lighting angles and the objects in the scene, given that the sun was at a very low angle and the shadows compressed (vertically, extended laterally) by the angle of the photographer. Any manipulation which may have been done is not distinguishable at this resolution.
The boy *removed* is most obviously fabricated for reasons both editorial (with regards to composition) and technical. Technically: the yellow material visible against the structure in the background behind and underneath the tank (which looks to be signage or equipment, it's difficult to make out given the depth of field used) is utterly plagued by a patterned replication, showing unskilled cloning tool usage. The front armor is not only magically repaired in this version, but also has tiles which mirror each other at their joint. The now inexplicable shadow which matched the boy previously remains, and is too sharp to be cast in conjunction with the antenna (or whatever it may be) contributing to the one next to it, even given the vertical/perspective shadow compression which makes this a more forgiving detail.
Editorially, that's *not* the way to shoot a tank. Were it the subject, the depth of field is acceptable but it's too large in frame which would distract from it; the image has also been shot to compress multiple planes of perspective, but the reasoning for that choice is completely devoid from this version. There remains no balance, sense of motion, or romanticism of the elements which would suggest this to be a professional photograph. Given that other talent is still obvious (use of lighting, combination of aperature use even with telephoto for precision DoF control) these omissions make it suspect. It's only when the relationship between tank and boy are present that the photo makes journalistic or artistic sense.
It's like watching one of those "funniest home video" gag ("gag" is an editorial pun here on my part) shows where people start trying to pick apart how the situation could have happened or been staged, without noticing the signs which do not appear in *front* of the camera: filming scenes without significant memorable of photographic content, panning to locations before the action occurs in preparation, etc.
There are multiple ways to tell a fake, and gentlemen I do tell you: the "no boy"'s a hack job.
(As a slight aside, the tank appears to be Israeli given the modern hebrew writing thereon and was not in motion when the photograph was taken)
Any spoon would be too big.
There is a famous photo of Soviet soldiers waving a flag over the Reichstag in Berlin, after their army had taken the city in 1945. The official photo was touched up to remove the multiple stolen watches on the arm of the flag waver.
It will get worse: someday, the Virtual Playmate will automatically scan your retina, compile a dossier on your softcore porn habits, and generate a customized list of turn-ons.
... and [Posting Comments to SlashDot]."
"My turn-ons include long walks on the beach
-kgj
Which is exactly why having journalists intermingled with the military is just a bad idea. Those idiots are given an inch to cover the war, and they've taken hundred's of miles of "freedom" which is really nothing more than lying.
There are a lot more subtle changes that can be made to a photo beyond the obvious big things like putting an American flag on an Iraqi tank, etc.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
You mean those nude pictures of Anna Kournikova and Jennifer Garner engaged in a lesbian tryst aren't real?!?
shame on you, you should have titled your post "SPOILER!!!" for those of us who are still playing the game. damn it.
It is easy to understand the temptation. The later photo is clearly better composed, with the man holding the child more in the foreground. Unfortunately, it gives the misleading (based on the photo from a moment before) impression that the soldier is intentionally aiming his rifle at the child. I can easily imagine how the photographer managed to convince himself that the altered photo was "more true" than the real ones. Of course, what he should have done was send in the first picture, which is less dramatic but gives a more accurate impression of what is going on.
Too bad, it's a better photo.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I took the liberty of doing a quick and dirty (fifteen minutes) retouch of the original picture (the one WITH the kid). This should show how incredibly bad the original retouch was.
Retouched Tank
when that image of O.J. Simpson was burned out to make him look really evil
It's a sad commentary that "really dark-skinned" is considered synonymous with "really evil" by anybody.
"I bet some of the cameras being used by the photographers don't have "red eye" reduction. Should they be fired too?"
What you are bringing up is the difference between correction and alteration. What this photographer did was clearly alteration: he changed the image to represent something that did not exist.
To remove red-eye, improve color balance, enhance contrast, or make similar modifications (either by digital or manual means) is not alteration. It is correction: making the final image more true to what the naked eye would see. The human eye and brain are very tolerant of variations in contrast, brightness, saturation, and color balance.
Physical limitations of the camera and film (or electronic elements) will result in images that are not true representations. Consider a subject that is dark colored. In the background is a pale blue sky with white clouds. You set the exposure on your camera to properly expose the subject. Normal processing will return a picture where the sky is washed out -- you can't tell the clouds from the sky. However, you can correct the brightness, contrast, and color balance of the sky (and not the subject) so the detail is retained. This is not alteration, because you have not changed the image objects from what you saw in the viewfinder. It is correction.
The newspaper most likely would not find a problem with correction; in fact, the paper probably would WANT the photographer to do this. Now, if the photographer had brought the picture into Photoshop and artificially added clouds against a deeper blue sky, that WOULD be alteration and as such would be unacceptable to the newspaper's "no alteration" policy.
--webmoth (slashdotusername@slashdotusername.com)
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
You might want to provide a pointer in that thread to a photo I havent linked to...
This was from the very lower right hand corner of the same image with the man with no head. The clams had pasted in a black girl wearing red ( so you would notice the black girl in the sea or white power-esque faces...) at it appears to be what looks like a "dick-head" in front of her.
The same black girl appears in a number of locations in the original, though this one view seems to be an expression of the disgust of the photo-editor team at having to do what they had been asked to do to editing the event pictures...and trying to "MAKE IT GO RIGHT"...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Dude, that is fucking heeelarious!
He's not pointing at the guy! Think about it in real time. Your holding your gun at your side. A guy quickly gets up. Pointing is looking through the scope or guide. He's still holding his gun, he just happened to swing his torso towards the man who stood up. It's a reflex not some form of slavery.
From the moment of its invention, photography has been a notoriously slippery semiotic medium. My favorite example: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/4a402 62x.jpg
This is a Mathew Brady photo from the Civil War showing a dead confederate soldier who, as implied by the photograph's title ("Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter"), met a just end. Except that years after its publication, the photo was proven "a fake" because the gun in this image would have never been carried by a confederate soldier. No technological retouching is required for a photo to be faked.
Which raises the question: would the L.A. Times have fired this photographer if he had intervened and shouted out to the soldier, "Hey, you're wrecking the shot... Point your gun over there instead!"
In all honesty, this is the photographers fault. His real mistake was taking bad photos. His attempt to fix this created an even bigger mistake. I take a lot of photos, and learn from them. This is how you get better. You missed the shot, you get another. But you keep your eyes open for The Shot cause its going to be there. You learn to anticipate it. You see it, you get it, you've got it. And your good. My whole point is that the photographer made mistakes and is accountable for it. The fact is he tried to cover up his mistake and got caught. Suck it up and learn. I'm guessing he caught the before and after shots, and missed the middle shot that had what he was trying to compose. Of course no photographer wants to admit missing the shot and having his/her work made the laughing stock. So you doctor the photo. Here's my question to you though. If he's worked for them for this many years, how many other important photos has he doctored? It brings his whole history into play.
After all, if the intent of the photo is the same, what's a little fix-up?
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Might be an unpopular opinion but if you look at the "better composition" he is talking about the photo looks like it was latered to make it seem as if the soldier is threatening a man holding a small child.
I do not think that digital alteration of news photos is necessarily bad (image enhancement comes to mind, sharpening or color balancing the photo, etc.) But "composing" photos of two distinct images leads us down the slippery slope and into the world of the World Weekly News type of tabloid trash in supermarket newstands.
Later.
To use the insane words of Michael Moore The "doctored" photo used in publication is a view into a fictional word. And its much like Michael Moore's Columbine film where he takes a gun to the bank (they gave out certificates, not guns). I digress.
Point is that we all believe what we see as truth. While its true that a photograph is a split second of reality, we can still pull some meaning from the image.
Journalists misrepresent and spin the truth. We all know that, we all do that ourselves. Photojournalists do it too, but to manipulate a photograph to create a fake, or fictional, reality is worse than composing a shot. I trusted the image as truth, but that scene never existed.
It doesn't matter whether or not how the photo was manipulated. To adjust the scene to mean something positive or negative is irrelevant. The bottom line is that the view that we are trusting as real never happened, ever.
This wasn't the government doing this but a journalist from our media who altered the photo. The alteration wasn't noticable- I failed to detect the doubling of people, but the altered photo to me makes the soldier look more menacing towards the civilians than the 2 seperate pictures.
...that this kind of thing has been going on at premier news sources like the Weekly World News? Ahhrgh!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Maybe Michael Moore will pick this guy up to work on his next documentary.
The truth about Bowling for Columbine
I'm curious, does anybody know what the caption was the LA Times put on the photo when they ran it originally? What did the editors (and therefore, the photographer) say the meant?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Are _you_ an idiot? There are other duplicates. There are two duplicate faces, as well. Look at the two heads directly to the right side of the duplicate "guy with white shirt" There are two duplicate faces and a duplicate back in the doctored photo.
Why not just look at it with a little common sense? "red eye" is an abysmal analogy at best.
Altered images have no business being passed off as reality. Even the hint of that happening (and this was a very minor transgression) could undermine a newspaper or magazines credibility. That might not matter to Sports Illustrated or Vogue but it certainly means something to the legitimate press.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I mean really, the idea that a photo could be unbiased to begin with, hehe please, as if the photojournalist is not communicating his idea by the framing, the location, the film, the lighting, the angle, the selection of the photo from a collection of photos for that matter, and then the captions: like >> look ma "the Iraqis are killing themselves". I mean sure images should not be directly manipulated but military should not be the only "credible" source on wartime information either. People seem to be posting as if a photo was this unbiased non-symbolic communication mechanism, when in reality a photo represents the individuals interests who took the photo.
Then you are left with who do you trust? Well fortunately there is a simple formula, the US interest in manipulating the truth is to do more booming, control the region, implement there version of democracy etc, the independent media mission might be to expose the realities of warfare for both sides. I just wish the media did not marginalize the idea of thinking about the world a little differently.
Faris Odeh was the subject of that photograph, and he was later shot by Israeli soldiers in Gaza. The photo was accurate, as Israeli tanks are driven by Israeli soliders who exhibit little compunction about shooting children.
Being thrown at Israeli tanks. Why fake it?
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My explanation fits the evidence, the smaller photo I linked to, and the shadows on the ground.
It also appeals to Occams razor.
But, still searching.
nope...
http://pro.corbis.com/popup/enlargemen
nope...
http://pro.corbis.com/popup/enlargeme
nope...
http://pro.corbis.com/popup/enlargeme
nope...
http://pro.corbis.com/popup/enlargeme
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
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:-/
http://pro.corbis.com/popup/enlargement.
nope...
http://pro.corbis.com/popup/enlargem
Bingo.
http://pro.corbis.com/popup/enlargement
Unfortunately, this is the retouched version.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
I don't think anyone ever caught on.
Face it, the British soldier looks more like he's pointing his gun directly at the man and his child in the altered photograph. He's a menacing foreign invader. They were a moment away from being 2 more dead civilians! In addition to changing the aim of the rifle, his pose is also more threatening with the change in position and the apparent distance between the soldier's rifle and the man carrying his injured child was also reduced. If you actually take the time to look at the retraction and the original photographs, you will see that the original two photographs aren't nearly as menacing.
The difference between this photograph and much of the journalism regarding the Iraq war is that there was an objective truth here and it was possible to identify the photographer's alteration of the truth to make a journalistic statement. It is not so easy most of the time.
Also, the whole LA Times photographer's explanation that the photo was changed to "improve the composition" is complete bull and I'm not surprised that the LA Times editorial staff is supporting that position (even though they fired him). It seems more likely that it was done to better make a specific impression on readers about the conduct of US and British soldiers.
Know when and where.
Original caption: A Palestinian child throws a stone at an Israeli tank on a road at the Palestinian Daheisheh refugee camp on the outskirts of West Bank town of Bethlehem 02 July 2002. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told delegates at the Labor party convention in Tel Aviv, that he doubted that the planned Palestinian elections can take place while the Israeli army remains in the territories. "I am not sure the Palestinians can have elections while the army is in the territories and I don't see the army coming out of the territories if there is still terror." The Israeli army entered the self-rule West Bank territories over a week ago in Operation Determined Path. AFP PHOTO/Musa AL-SHAER
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Even if it seems innocent and even if it makes a better picture, then journalism and fiction must be separated. The Photographer should have submitted the better picture to an arts committe and not to the paper.
Too much of our news today comes "digested" or commented with the "irrelevant" parts filtered, but exactly those parts are essential because they are part of the truth. Often reporters will fill in irrelevant parts in front and after the news part to make sure that the facts are seen in the "right" perspective, and I personally find that very offensive.
So I wellcome when a newspaper takes these steps to ensure or at least attempts to assure that we get a more accurate information and not just the fuzzy, cuddly or better composed version of the reality.
And if I am not mistaken, then it is not the first time that the Times has taken these steps.
In this case I think it is fully mandated because the "doctored" version shows an aggressive soldier opposing a civilian, while the real photos shows a soldier calling for attention (the head of the civilian is turned away) and the next real photo shows the soldier talking to the civilian, but not pointing his weapon at the civilian.
An aggressive tension has been falsely introduced.
On a side note, digital (and regular) modifications are the rule rather than the exception for photographers. They take inches off of those models legs, add this, remove that. One interesting trick is that they dilate the pupils of models to make them look sexier. Am I missing the importance of this?
You're only missing the obvious difference between fashion photography and photo-journalism.
Actually, the altering of the photo had more to do with the Iraqi man holding the child in his arms and the position of the arm and weapon held by the British soldier.
My other first post is car post.
My understanding is that the two real picture were combined to make it look like the soldier was pointing a rifle at the man and the child.
My blog can kick your blog's ass
I was just about to make the same comment. Time (or was it Newsweek?) made OJ look darker. The parent to your comment is where it was claimed to make OJ 'really evil'. I think this says more about the parent than it does to Time.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
nuff said
Some of the funnier examples I've seen on the front page of the 'Weekly World News' while waiting in the checkout line at the food store;
"Edgar Cayce Reincarnated as Psychic Fly!"
Darned if this one didn't have an enlarged microphotograph of a fly with Cayce's face matted on top of its head. To WWN's credit, they did a decent job; It really did look like a big fly with a human head.
"Baby dolphin born with human hands!"
This one wasn't done quite so well. They took a stock photo (probably from the old Marineland park in St. Augustine, FL) of a mother and baby dolphin swimming together, and did some digital trickery to make it appear that the youngster had very short arms and a pair of hands instead of pec fins. The proportions were way off, as anyone who's spent any amount of time around live dolphins would know in a heartbeat.
The irony there is that a dolphin's pec fin does, in fact, have four finger bones, one shorter one where a thumb would be, and a wrist joint nearly identical to that of a human. I have to wonder if WWN already knew this, figured other people might know, and simply took the next (il)logical step forward.
Anyway; Digital trickery in photos, if done for the right reasons, is a fantastic tool for creative comedy. Done for other reasons, well... That's already been well-covered in this topic.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
but it bears saying again:
The issue is not whether or not the original photos or resulting photo create different impressions. Some people don't see a difference and others think it is major, but that isn't the point of why he got canned.
The issue is not even as simple as whether he (the photojournalist) should have made any alteration at all.
The real issue is that he submitted that photo to the editors without advising THEM of the alteration(s) made. Printing a photo on the front page of a news journal which can be easily proven to have been altered is serious egg-in-the-face for an organization that needs to keep reader faith. Terminating his employment and loudly announcing that his behavior violated photojournalistic ethics and his employment contract shifts all blame for the use of an altered photo to him and shows them to be conscientious about responding to such incidents - if not careful to avoid them beforehand.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
I support disallowing the media to edit photos they state to be factual. Ramifications of doctoring images are not always immediately evident. After 9/11, an Associated Press photo of smoke coming from the World Trade Center looked like a devil's face. Upon questioning, the AP stated that they do not permit photos to be edited in any way.
One of the most famous cases where a cartoon was accepted in court as a factual representation of the fact was in the prosecution of Jim Mitchell for killing his brother Artie.
s ic s/ballistics/5.html?sect=21
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/foren
Then expert Lucien Haag showed a video of his devising of a computer simulation of the incident. Artie was shown as being shot twice on his way into the hallway and then shot in the head in the hallway. Haag included all eight shots as he believed they would have occurred, although there were only five recorded on the 911 call. The way he did this was to trace the paths of the bullets by calculating in room angles and impact points from the point at which Jim Mitchell was standing when he fired. Haag represented these trajectories with dramatic red lasers.
When the defense, who had stridently opposed having this tape admitted into evidence, asked Haag if there were other possibilities besides the ones he had mapped, he was forced to admit that there were quite a few other possibilities. It was not an exact science, but an interpretation based on speculation.
In the mid-90s blues guitar legend Robert Johnson was honored with a USPS commemerative stamp. Of course they removed the cigarette dangling from his mouth. Both the original picture and the stamp are on the link above.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Has anyone else noticed any commerical signs and logos being edited during war coverage? Specificly, I am very sure I saw a reporter giving his story while standing in from of a truck clearly labeled ITSUBISHI . Am I crazy or did they clean out the "M"? Unfortunately I don't recall the particular news outlet.
The line is very fine. Removing a powerline would be okay in one instance, but not in another.
"Let's just make the blood on these people that were killed a little more red..."
to paraphrase Pink Floyd, "Mother, should I trust the government?
This is not censorship in any way shape or form. The article makes it very clear that Times policy is that no photographs be altered. The Photographer should have been aware of this policy, and chose to ignore it. This is not a case of the government not liking what the photograph portrays and telling the newspaper not to print it. That would be censorship. Firing a photographer for violating policy is not.
However, even if the Times themselves had not liked what the altered image showed, and pulled the photograph whatever reason (it was unpatriotic, it portrayed soldiers in an unfavorable light, etc.) even that would not be censorship. It would be a private business deciding not to show a picture for their own reasons. I've noticed that many Slashdotters don't seem to understand that censorship is only when the government forces someone to stop saying something, printing something, etc. A private business can decide not to say something, or to fire an employee for saying things that they believe are damaging to their business, and be perfectly within their rights.
Still shouldn't trust the government though.
My user number is the sum of 4 squares.
I don't see many comments about the other story linked to about the Sports Illustrated cover. It took me several minutes to figure out what the largest alteration was. (And it wasn't mentioned.) It is that the picture was rotated. What's the difference? The player committing the facemasking is much more menacing in the cover because he appears larger due to the rotation. This fits the editorial slant (that the Ravens are meanies).
What if it looks like it's not real. Like this picture of my car. Is it real? Or is it a 3ds job and a composite photo. And how can you tell if it is fake?
PS It is a real unedited photograph....tee hee hee.
Who is this "Poster" guy and why does he own all of my comments?!?
An all too common practice is a video interview technique called the "reaction shot". The way this interview production technique works is when you are interviewing someone, mostly the camera is on the interviewee, but sometimes you want the image to switch back you you while the interviewee is still talking (this is called an "reaction shot"). It can be certainly be used to manipulate the emotions of the viewer (imagine a picture of the interviewer rolling their eyes, or glaring angrily, etc, etc).
When you see this on tv, one might think that there are two cameras and this is a contemporaneous view of you "reacting" while the interviewee is talking, but it isn't usually the case. Most reaction shots are filmed before or after the interview in the studio when the interviewee is not there since usually only one camera is used and the reaction shots are "insert-edited" with a contiguous audio track to lend the appearence of contemporaneous action.
Ahh, the magic of television. Reaction shots are done to improve composition and production values (staring at the interviewee for a long time can make you turn the channel in boredom, and a wide pan with a single camera will get you sick like a ping-pong match). You might say that since the audio track is unedited, this is a fair representation of what occured during the interview, but it's easy to see how this can be a slippery slope. In fact in the hollywood movie, Broadcast News, they have an all too true scene about the reaction shot where William Hurt tries a few times to fake tears to improve a reaction shot.
Although you might think that this "reaction shot" stuff is just a lot of hype, but during the Nixon-Kennedy presidential debates, it's widely thought that the reaction shots of Nixon fidgetting and sweating while Kennedy was talking likely contributed to Kennedy winning the presidency. Polling data taken after the debate seemed to give the edge to Nixon among those who heard the debate on radio, where the tv watchers gave the edge to Kennedy. You can thank Don Hewitt technical director in charge of the television switcher at the debates (who went on to be the executive producer of 60 Minutes).
Here's a quote from a Boston Globe article which explored the question if this type of insert editing was "ethical" journalism. Something to think about when you are watching the evening news...
So far (and I admit that I haven't really searched for anyone discussing this subject) I've yet to come across anyone discussing the far reaching implications of this film:
The seemless insertion of what's-his-name's head on other-dude's body demonstrates that even during full-motion close-ups,
YOU CANNOT BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU SEE ON TV (or in photographs)!
goes into effect at the first use of the term 'Slashbot'. Same old ad hominem rhetoric, you lose.
Ah cool, a search for "Faris Odeh" did the trick. Kinda creepy reading his story -- how do you make peace with a society that raises children with a death wish?
And certainly it looks like many young boys want to 'grow up' to be just like Faris, so to speak.
I hope that these kinds of attitudes can be reversed when/if peace is finally restored to the area.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The photographer did not need to enlarge the British soldier to paste the one weapon position into the child-holding picture. Neither edit is appropriate. The two events that were pasted together did apparently happen within a few seconds of each other, but in no reality was the soldier a giant.
And yes, "Dark Side of the Moon" is my fav by far. I grew up on that album there for awhile : )
Clearly, the moral here is that Photoshop (and similar programs) should be made ILLEGAL.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Ummmm.. Shouldn't that be, "Mother, should I trust the corporate war photographer?"
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
"exact representation of what they are looking at."
"_anything_ doctored cannot be considered news"
all pictures are taken out of context. i had a photo major teacher once tell me that a picture can't tell the whole story. it just gives you a general idea. don't trust solely on pictures; words are necessary in order to assist and prevent misconceptions. which brings me back to the point that not only should "anything [that's] doctors" not be considered news, but pictures alone shouldn't be considered news.
well, i don't usually pipe up about this kind of stuff, but i sort of feel like this is the one area where i might sort of actually know what i am talking about. I have been a newspaper photographer (for the NY Daily News, Cox, and briefly for Gannet), as well as the usual freelance type stuff for Newsweek, rolling stone, etc, and now i am a photo editor at a daily newspaper, and well, the thing about this la times guy is simply that he must have gone a little crazy over there. I mean, altering photos the way he did, in a journalism context is simply not done.not only can you get straight canned for digitally altering photos, you can get the boot for asking someone to do something specific for you that they werent doing already (except in the case of portaits and 'illustrations' which are strictly labeled as such'). The thing about Cosmo and scientologists is that they are most certainly not journalists, their only goal is aesthetic appeal, and therefore, anything go's. So, in a word, the thing that this guy did is just simply not done, ever, if you do do it, and your caught, you will be fired, and worse, blackballed from newspapers for at least a decade or two. Basically this guy is going to have to switch careers now (wedding photographer?). This in and of itself is a pretty powerful insentive not to fake photos. Since basically being a newspaper photographer at any medium size or up daily newspaper is sort of like being in the NBA, and are so heavily prized it is insane (ie, i recently had to hire a new photographer, and i got three resumes, about 50 of which were all really good). But I digress, on a final note, I will say I understand why he did it, The pressure for photographers on a prize assignment such as this one to file good photos can be immense, and if you don't cut the mustard, there is some chance that you will be recalled and put back on traffic accident/kid feature duty -and when you have spent your life preparing to cover some huge, historically significant assignment, this can be pretty a most terrifying concern. Ok, im going to stop now, but i could go on to how part of the problem is that there isnt the sort of money in print journalism anymore that always someone more time and energy to produce quality work, and instead shifts the focus to filing photos seconds before your competitor.. bla bla bla, ok, im going to shut up. cheers
My father used to be a paratrooper, and on one particular deployment (it was premptive action... no shots fired, so a lot of lounging around on the beach and chatting to civilians).
:)
Anyway, one particular journalist decided that the lack of news didnt make him happy. Seeing a member of my fathers squad talking to a young boy the journalist yells out "He's going to kill you! RUN!" - Then he snaps some wonderful pics of a 'terrorised boy' 'running away in fear' from 'nasty british para invasion'.
Digital imaging isnt the only way to alter the percieved truth. Decisions should come down to the integrity *grin* of the particular journalist involved.
There was a happy ending to the story though... the journalist had his equiptments confiscated
those who control the past, control the future. those who control the present, control the past.
What a joke! One face?? Racist!
"I photograph things to see what things look like photographed."
maybe they wanted to fix the photographer. the desk in magazines and newspapers does a lot of cropping and enhancing anyway, besides its wartime--what do you expect. Just that some sharpeyed girl noticed, so the buck stopped at the photographer. when entire articles are imaginary disinformation, whats a couple of pictures. no, there's something else.
From the alt.usage.english FAQ:
The idiom "couldn't care less", meaning "doesn't care at all" (the meaning in full is "cares so little that he couldn't possibly care less"), originated in Britain around 1940. "Could care less", which is used with the same meaning, developed in the U.S. around 1960. We get disputes about whether the latter was originally a mis-hearing of the former; whether it was originally ironic; or whether it arose from uses where the negative element was separated from "could" ("None of these writers could care less...") Meaning- saving elaborations have also been suggested; e.g., "As if I could care less!"; "I could care less, but I'd have to try"; "If I cared even one iota -- which I don't --, then I could care less." An earlier transition in which "not" was dropped was the one that gave us "but" in the sense of "only". "I will not say but one word", where "but" meant "(anything) except", became "I will say but one word."
What does these pictures really show ? We cannot see what is going on around the soldier and civilians.
In Our Own Image - The Coming Revolution in Photography was written by Fred Ritchin in 1990. The second edition from 1999 is still available. From the overleaf:
It was a mighty fine read when I got the first edition at a photography gallery in Ottawa in 1994, and it would provide an excellent follow-up to anyone interested enough in this topic to read more. Within three years of my reading the book, digitally altered spy photos of prototype cars were making regular appearances in the automotive press, the idea being to show the car underneath the vinyl cladding/camoflage. For a while, the press made note of which photos were altered, but eventually they stopped bothering.
I was going to read what you wrote below my threshold, then I saw you chose not to use enough grammar to make it readable. Oh well.
If I were to insult someone's intelligence, I'd probably want to spell "aperture" properly.
PS. What's even stupider is that you spent 5 paragraphs blathering on about something meta-monkey was able to say adequately in one sentence.
A google search for "hilary clinton" "spy magazine" dominatrix turned up this page which has the photo (unfortunately a poor copy) and a discussion of how it was done.
The page goes on to say:
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Try this google search to find more pages about Hillary's appearance on the cover of Spy.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The background in both shots has been darkened to reduce the dynamic range. If you look at the background anywhere near the tank (especially between the machine guns), you can see how bright the background originally was. It's not even a very good job too - looks like it was done by hand. There's a fairly trivial way to do it automatically in Photoshop.
What was needed was a piece of pure fantasy. Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when Big Brother devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble, rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed. Today he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence......Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.
:)
George Orwell,1984
First of all, if that had been all the photographer-turned-artist did, I would still object. You could put an "extra" person in the line-of-sight of a soldier's gun where there had been none before.
But look at the final photo again. As someone else mentioned above, the top of soldier's head is cropped (along with his foot). The crowd has been brought closer to the soldier, and it looks like he's pointing his gun right at the center guy's head.
To top it all off, it wasn't even one doctored photo. Two photos were pieced together. How could it even occur to a journalist that this might be ethical?
Most importantly, that event as depicted did not actually happen. And when you're feeding this photo to the public in a medium purported to be describing factual events, you have to keep the original idea of the image.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
You are trying to be to close to reality as possible.
Act in consequence.
You are trying to modify reality.
Be fired.
Did you understand or should I spell it s-l-o-w-l-y for you?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I recall a stink regarding a photo taken at a british racehorse meeting - there was a child i na wheelchair (it was a presentation of an award or something). The kid had got the paper - can't recall which one, but it was a tabloid - and they'd been edited out. Caused a big stink, on national news (TV and radio, and at least one other tabloid).
Also, I recall a british council brochure where they'd edited in (or out, I can't recall which) black people into a brochure. Or was it a political party, not a council? I can't recall. But it probably happens more than you think. This one also was in the national news.
Sorry, no URLs to hand.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
Wow, a decade after picking up his books, I finally grok that line from R.A.W.
Here we have dozens of people aguing about the isness and isn'tness of some Damned Thing, all the while blind to the axiom that
"All propositions are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense".
The photo(s) were true, in that they depicted accurately what was going on.
False, in that the exact arrangement of light and shadow didn't happen.
Meaningless in that it was a falsification presented as fact (the virtue of fact is that it is true, if you have a false fact, it is no longer what it is).
Doubly meaningless by virtue of having passed through the intestinal tract of a modern media during wartime.
The varying interpretations here demonstrate that the manipulation wasn't done for political reasons, (or at least it didn't succeed in emphasizing the effect one way or the other).
IMO, I agree that his actions were totally wrong, unethical, dismissable, although not in this case deceptive.
It's the waiting for the next case that means we must stamp on this one.
I do prepress for a living, with a fair amount of retouch. Over the years, I have had to fill in bald spots, change hair color, get rid of wrinkles, move or eliminate people (digitally!), move or change backgrounds, etc. I would say 80% of the retouch I do is to directly or indirectly appease people's vanity. The unwritten law seems to be that it's OK if it's NOT pertinent to whatever's being presented -- story, brochure, conference, etc. The second major category is fashion, where it IS pertinent but there's already a built-in "caveat emptor" factor (the retouching standards for fashion are much higher than anything else, maybe because everyone is always looking for it). Third category is product "enhancement" -- sweat on Coke can, color shifts, etc. People seem to anticipate and expect this in advertising, although there are ways to get into trouble.
a list_sect ors/23.shtml
Judicious cropping, burning and dodging alone can completely alter perceptions, so the issue is not "digital" per se. It's the intent that counts. Nobody I know would do what this photographer did and think it's OK, same as the OJ cover and the National Geographic cover (where a pyramid was moved (whew!) to make it fit the vertical format). What is being presented both never happened and is pertinent to the stories. They lied. And anyone good enough to do the work will know the difference -- it's not that slippery a slope. (Newsweek initially proclaimed its innocence over the OJ cover, saying it was inadvertent. Call BS on that -- the time spent fussing over regular covers is ridiculous, let alone one with high-profile racial overtones.)
Interesting article along these lines (sorry, can't get rid of space):
http://www.bjphoto.co.uk/cms/words/speci
> To paraphrase Pink Floyd, "Mother, should I trust > the government?"..." This has nothing to do with the government. Particularly during this war, one should be asking how much trust one can place in the media to show what is really going on.
--yes,thanks, I've been reading their stuff, but I wouldn't say they are completely non partisan. They are pro iraq obviously, but what they are writing does appear to be of a more sophisticated nature, goes beyond some of the fluff pieces I've seen, and isn't pulling any punches on either side as to wins/losses/capabilities, etc..
I am pro-US troops and pro Iraqi civilians. I hope the iraqis themselves would just do what needs to be done to get themselves a better government, according to THEIR wishes, not ours or england's or israel's or france's or russia's or china's.
We got no leg to stand on morally when less than 50% of the people here in the US even vote, or can even name their own representative, but they can rattle off the names on their bogus "team". It's disgusting.
I "support our troops" to come home, immediately, and I'd like to see that war money to go to help take care of all the vets we ALREADY HAVE FROM PAST WARS, the gulf war one vets, nam vets, korea vets, ww2 vets, etc, instead, who have been mostly ignored. And I'd like to see a lot of top governmental "leaders" exposed and convicted for selling WMD to anyone, anyplace, anytime. and I REALLY want the true nature of the 9-11 attacks independently investigated, and the ones involved with white skin and suits on charged as well. This so called "9-11 investigation" is a warren commission whitewash, you can smell it coming. I have just learned that at least one of the 9-11 victims relatives read off the list of evidence showing massive government prior knowledge and involvement,item after item after item, and she got greeted with SILENCE by those bozos running that so called "investigation".
This government is a junta, and it's obvious that 9-11 was a reichstagg event that was allowed to happen, and now used to finalize some goon technofuedalistic takeover. They didn't take into account that we have the internet now, and can't pull off another kennedy assassination coverup forever. It's the same guys or their sons in the criminal shadow government pulling this stuff off now. There's names, dates, events, that aren't going away, eventually we'll see some real justice, IF we can get the beer swilling rah rah rah cheerleading brownshirts to just stop it with the war as a football game and step back and take a real honest look at the evidence.
--I will make a point later to find some of this person's writings then, as it is a new name to me. thanks!
Looking at the two originals, and the altered photo, I fail to see the point in even creating the alteration. It wasn't much more dramatic than the originals (if at all).
The finished product doesn't seem worth the risk of losing your job over. (Which I agree was the right course of action in this case)
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
Now it can truthfully be said of this actor, who pretty much everyone in the world knows, that his face was his fortune. He was a very good-looking guy - but like most people, he had a couple of minor facial imperfections. In his case, though, these 'blemishes' were almost an iconic part of his appearance.
The order from our PHB publisher before he'd sign off on the cover? "REMOVE UNSIGHTLY MOLE."
[Sigh...]
You must think in Russian.
Having just looked at the photo, there were quite a few modifications made:
1. superimposed two images,
2. The soldier was made larger,
3. the saturation of the soldier was pulled up, some details of his face was added..
To be honest, when that picture first came up, it *looked* altered.
You said:
..."
:-)
"Having worked for both USA Today and washingtonpost"
and
"... I can tell you that know responsible news
Not as an editor I presume!
-- Brendan Hills
Some years ago, a photograph was shown in a French TV show about the "rise of radical Islam in poor neighbourhoods populated by Arabs".
The problem was that they had added beards on a photograph of idling youngsters to make them seem like radical islamists!
"C:\My Documents" a concept invented by idiots and only supported by idiots.
/home/snaller (or whatever you use) any better?
Huh? What's wrong with it? Why's
Of course on their non-single-user OSes they have per-user versions (c:\documents and settings\snaller\my documents, etc.)
So much of the media is co-opted for nationalism in the nation of reporting. Its good to see integrity win these small battles, even if they surrender to most of the large ones.
What they said:
What they meant:
"I recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever."
(Yes, that about sums it up.)
"The amount of mathematics she knows will surprise you."
(And I recommend not giving that school a dime...)
"I simply can't say enough good things about him."
(What a screw-up.)
"I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine."
(I can't tell you how happy I am that she left our firm.)
"When this person left our employ, we were quite hopeful he would go
a long way with his skills."
(We hoped he'd go as far as possible.)
"You won't find many people like her."
(In fact, most people can't stand being around her.)
"I cannot reccommend him too highly."
(However, to the best of my knowledge, he has never committed a
felony in my presence.)
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