Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
The point is that _anything_ doctored cannot be considered news. If that became standard practice it would be so easy to abuse.
Pictures are taken as evidence to be an exact representation of what they are looking at. If you can't trust pictures in a newspaper or magazine, you can't trust the newspaper or magazine, period.
This was definitely the right decision.
Engineering and the Ultimate
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."
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.
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!
Or get it from the horses mouth here
It's a slippery slope. Once it's OK to alter photos as long as you preserve the "theme," all that's left is for a newspaper with a deluded idea of the "theme" of a photo to seriously alter a photo's contents. This already happens all the time with quotations being taken out of context and having phrases parenthetised for "clarity".
IMHO, that's too simplistic of a way to make a decision.
...and you're telling me that coverage of the news by the talking heads is pure fact and nothing else?
I bet some of the cameras being used by the photographers don't have "red eye" reduction. Should they be fired too? Won't the red dot make the person look angry?
C'mon folks, let's look at this more critically.
I strongly disagree for two reasons. One is that the paper already had a stated policy of no alterations, period. Once that policy has been adopted, they have to follow it. Two is that they chose the right policy. There has to be a bright, obvious line between what is allowable and what isn't. If you let a photographer alter things for artistic effect then somebody has to sit there and decide in each case whether the changes are just artistic or if they've distorted the truth. Only by having an objective standard of no alterations at all can you avoid that problem.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
they photoshoped the heads of wiesels onto the bodies of the french and german government. photoshop has no place in news gathering.
If you look closely, you'll see that the digital composition implies that the soldier was directing the civilian with the baby in his arms, implying that this soldier was somehow comforting, directing or otherwise assisting this distressed person.
The actual photos revels that the soldier's raised hand was either unseen by the civilian or directed to something else.
That's art, not reporting. That's the big deal.
The best way to do is to be.
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.
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.
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. -- ChaoticChaos
Fade into courtroom interior..
"Your honor, prosecution presents exhibit A. We took the liberty of touching up this photo. While it still represents the events that took place the day Mr. Chaos murdered his girlfriend, it doesn't make anything appear to have happened that didn't. It conveys the same thing."
"OBJECTION!!! Conjecture!"
"Sustained! Counsel, please approach the bench."
In one picture, the soldier is waving his hand and the guy with the baby is ignoring him; in the touched up one, the baby-carrier is looking at the soldier. That's a significant difference - what is this soldier doing, and is he getting any respect? In the first picture, it looks like his hand is up just to counter-balance himself as he's walking. In the composite, it looks like he's waving at people and they are dutifully following his orders.
I was the main non-sports fotographer for a newspaper in college & talked with my editor about this. Sure, you can digitally take out something as simple as a fence that's blocking a view, but then that implies that there is no fence to block the view (and thus no security/privacy barrier). And that's not the truth.
So, I agree with the editors here. No manipulation should be tolerated at all. The covers of magazines are different, though (and legally recogonized as different, too) - they serve as an attraction to buy the magazine, and not news reporting.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Gee, I saw the 3 photographs and really don't see what the big deal is.
Directly from the article:
Journalism ethics forbid changing the content of news photographs, and it is specifically barred in the newspaper's policy.
So, he violated his employers policy, and he exercised bad ethics. Pretty simple...
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
I bet some of the cameras being used by the photographers don't have "red eye" reduction....
C'mon folks, let's look at this more critically.
Ok... red eye reduction removes something that wasn't there originally. Unless the person you took a photograph has bright red eyes you are removing something that the camera artifically inserted into the image. The same goes with removing lense flair, colour balance correction, etc. This is *totally* different than manipulating the image by adding or subtracting content.
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.
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
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.
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!
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?
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%.
"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
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.
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.
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.
Ok... red eye reduction removes something that wasn't there originally. Unless the person you took a photograph has bright red eyes you are removing something that the camera artifically inserted into the image.
Not true at all. The back of the eye actually is red. When a bright light is shown directly into the iris, the tissue at the back can be seen. It really is red. You just don't see it because the iris is designed to capture light for viewing not reflect it but a camera flash sends too much light in at once. Hence...redeye.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
Part of the problem with photography is that a picture on film (or nowadays digital) is not the same as what you see. For any photo, the lightness / darkness is partly subjective to the settings on the camera, and greatly subjective to the person handling processing. "Dodging and burning" or darkening and lightening portions of an image to bring out masked detail is a common practice, and most (99.999% I'd say) photographers consider a dodged and burnt image to be unaltered unless it makes the image appear truly different than the scene it was taken from. Color photos are even more confusing, because the human mind compensates for variations in lighting, while film doesn't (except for built-in biases to certain lights per film). Colors also have to be adjusted during printing using a system of filters.
Photo.net has what I consider an authoritive determination of what is classified as altered, and I suspect for those not familiar with photography, it will give you a bit of an idea about just how subjective a printed image can be, from the type of paper used, to the amount of contrast in the print, to the dodging and burning, and the color compensation... and these are all AFTER exposure considerations. Many more considerations can be made before the exposure!
SIG: HUP
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..."
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...
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."