Feb 25 2010
documentary photograph & photoshop
Update: New York Time tech writer David Pogue raised the question of Photoshop and Photography: When is it Real? The subject came up when two winners in Popular Photography’s annual Reader’s Photos Contest had two winners that clearly were Photoshop compositions.
The question is when does manipulation take an image beyond a photograph? Next year the magazine handles the issue by having a separate category for Photoshop creations?
What do you think about that and the questions raised by my examples below?
One way that I describe the way I work is that I’m a documentary photographer that both knows how to find and see great light, and knows how to make it great when its not.
When I doing a commercial job part of the process is going into a real situation and making it look better. If that involves doing a head transplant from one frame to another or cleaning up a distracting background in Photoshop – that’s just part of the service that’s offered.
But what about when I head back out into the streets? What sort of alteration is fair game? Most serious journalistic publications only allow what could be traditionally done in a darkroom. Perhaps there is a vigorous discussion that is raging in the fine arts world about this issue that I’m not following.
What do you think is fair game from the two examples below and an earlier post about a Moulin Rouge photo?
An altered documentary photo of an Upper Eastside socialite walking her poodle
The grate was behind her foot and the sprinkler sign was removed
This Upper Eastside photo of a society women taking her poodle out for a walk was only slightly altered. The red sign above the fire-hose plug and the sidewalk grate were removed to cut down on the visual distraction. I personally only have a slight problem with this one. Would it be better if the alterations were indicated similar to what I did with these photos?
A subway mime preparing for her performance
One frame has the great reflection in the mirror.....and the other has the reaction of the passengers
The subway mime is more of a stretch. Instead of just cleaning up stray distractions this is a blend of two moments where the charm comes from actually being there and capturing the moment. I could say that I indeed captured the moment and the convergence just happened a different times. In my heart I feel its cheating. But is a much better photo as the combination than either one is alone.
What do you think? Where would you draw the line?
Mark Harmel
I think that photojournalism has a responsibility to limit alteration of the photos to only those changes that will improve the clarity of the image i.e. sharpness, brightness. The word used was improve – and I mean this to differentiate from wholesale changes. Painting something out, or darkening (or brightening) an undesired element out of an image would not make my list for allowed changes.
Non-documentary photos however, everything’s game – the end result is what matters. People can do whatever fancy tricks they want – they usually wind up looking gimmicky anyway.
Mark,
One of the sides of this debate that has always bothered me is that it seems photojournalists are held to a higher standard than journalists. For instance if a reporter exaggerates a story, or represents just one side as the ‘truth’ few complain. But if a photographer does too much ‘burning and dodging’ their very career is on the line.
By way of example, over 20 years ago I was in Guatemala working on a photojournalism story. While I was there I heard about a slaughter that took place in one of the outlying villages. The story was covered by a reporter from the NY Times who dutifully reported the hard line army’s side as fact. No one in Guatemala believed this story to be even close to the truth, and instead of guerillas carrying out the massacre as reported, it turned out to the be army itself. (This was very common at the time.) When I asked other reporters about this coverage they wrote if off to lazy journalism saying it should have been painfully obvious to anyone with any degree of familiarity with the situation.
When I got back to the States and checked, sure enough the army’s version was the only version that ran, and so was the only version heard by the Western World.
Now who did more to undermine “journalism”, a photographer creating a more compelling composition, or the lazy journalist? Guess who’ll get the raise and big career?
Mark,
One needs to consider that the use of Photoshop as a part of a photographer’s toolbox is still a relatively new phenomenon and as time goes on, you will continue to see younger photographers coming up who have never done without its availability. Hopefully, judicious and skilled use of this tool will prevail. It’s good to keep in mind that deceit and exaggeration can and have been easily accomplished in the “traditional darkroom” as well. The infamous Time magazine “darkened OJ” cover for example, could easily have been accomplished in a non-digital environment.
As for your two examples, I believe that what you did in the first is perfectly allowable. You simply removed pointless distractions which is something I do all the time. In the second example you ended up with a great image, but what makes it so compelling is the perceived interaction between the mime looking up and secondary subject looking back, and the truth is that those two things didn’t happen in the same shot. Cheating? I don’t think so, unless you somehow attempt to misrepresent the image as if it you had caught it as one spontaneous moment.
Mark,
Don’t see the point in changing those photos. Especially the first one.
It makes no sense to me why would anyone want to change the sign and the grate in that photo. It doesn’t make the photo any better.
The second one is a montage – but it tells a story, it’s now more an illustration than it is a documentary photograph.
Hi Mark,
I really prefer the natural beauty of every photography. For photojournalism, making photoshop as a verb distorts the facts of a news photograph. Adding or removing elements make it a digital art already and not a pure photography anymore — just my own view.
On the first photo, the signage is just too small, at least for me, to distract ones eye.
Thanks!
We have always (as man the tool builder goes) developed innovative and better-performing solutions. And a few designer/photographer/gas station attendants are promoting the use of low-tech processes that have a minimal impact on the natural environment.
Take ladies makeup for example, some low tech paint and a different first impression.
Changing a thing may be in our nature yet to leave alone is quite the meditation.
Images are documentary,illustration,neutral, highly charged, gimmicky, etc. and i feel should be labeled in the journalism world as altered or not altered but not labeled in illustration or fine art applications.
Long live natural beauty.
Journalists deal with a comparable question when they work with quotes. I usually tape interviews and use exact quotes, with ellipses, brackets, or partial quotes if necessary to deal with less than perfectly formed sentences. It is sometimes quite annoying that people say almost exactly the perfect sentence and then mar it by trailing off or stuttering in some way.
But, depending on the publication, editors may drop repetitive text without ellipses, combine sentences that weren’t necessarily said concurrently, or insert minor words (e.g., a noun rather than a pronoun that needs a first reference). I’m not talking about changes that alter the meaning or context of quotations, just as removing the grate in the first photo doesn’t change the meaning of the photo. But it’s not an exact duplication of what was said. The argument, which is occasionally made explicit, is that if you were taking notes rather than using a recorder, that’s the level of precision you’d have (if that). In these cases, I go along with the editor, as long as the meaning is not altered. What I do not do–a very common practice in some organizations–is write a snappy quote and call a source and ask them to allow me to quote them saying it. Any snappy quote you read in my work is something someone actually said. But if you’re interviewing regular people who don’t talk in sound bites, you have to do much longer interviews, and more of them, to get those rare perfect quotes.
On this question, the book Objectivity by Peter Galison and Lorraine Daston is very interesting. Here’s a blog post I wrote about it: http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/002659.html
I always like the method that Hunter Thompson employed. He had the fictional character of Raul Duke that he could feed quotes that summed up an event in a way that Thomson felt, but that no one else had actually said.
The Duke part morphed into the Uncle Duke character in Doonesbury and Thompson used Duke in many other complicated ways.
What Thompson did was also a different form of journalism.
…well – I think it’s just fantastic… <3 Pearl the Mime
It’s a very hard question to determine where the line is. Personally, I always liked to try and keep most photos as close to as the moment they were shot. When it comes to photojournalism I feel this should hold true as well. Of course I don’t even stick to this myself, but when people start to significantly alter photos, it irks me from time to time. I stil love film photography, and although I don’t develop pictures myself anymore, I miss the dark room. Burning, dodging, etc by hand really gives you an appreciation for photoshop, haha
Ryan´s last blog ..Mt. Baldy California – Photography
If I alter a photo too much then I call it an image.
Most photos need a bit of post processing, exposure, contrast etc. and photojournalism should stick to this. They are there to provide the truth and if photos have articles removed or placed into them it alters our perception of an event/time/place and chips away at that truth/trust.
tobyct´s last blog ..Photograph. Folkestone at Night.
I like what you did with the subway/mime photo and completely agree with your rational.
Your hospital shooting was very good. Keep it up.
I like your blog a lot. I wish a lot that I could write same way as you do.