Whatever you do, don't misrepresent editorial images!

[Jeff Boerio]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/07/reuters.photog.reut/index.html

London, England (Reuters) -- Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after a review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Wow. And what's worse, is that they looked like really bad edits, too.

- Jeff

[Michael Chu]

It does look like a really bad edit. If anything, I think he made the smoke LESS than MORE...

...but it really makes you think about the boundaries of editorial photos. How much is TOO MUCH processing? One could argue that even color adjustments could be misrepresenting the scene...it's a fine line, IMO. I work for my school's newspaper and we, too, must follow that rule as photojournalists. We're limited to color adjustments but I wonder how strict those big guys are (Reuters, AP, etc) in terms of processing.

[Jeff Boerio]

It does look like a really bad edit. If anything, I think he made the smoke LESS than MORE...

...but it really makes you think about the boundaries of editorial photos. How much is TOO MUCH processing? One could argue that even color adjustments could be misrepresenting the scene...it's a fine line, IMO. I work for my school's newspaper and we, too, must follow that rule as photojournalists. We're limited to color adjustments but I wonder how strict those big guys are (Reuters, AP, etc) in terms of processing.

It appears that a lot of people are being especially critical of the photographs coming out Israel/Lebanon (especially the littlegreenfootballs.com blog site, and there are links to a bunch of other blog sites). If THESE stories are to be believed, then there's a whole lot of deception going on with photographs and their captions.

- Jeff

[Morgan J Segal]

Photojournalism is different than editorial

[Todd Corzett]

Photojournalism is different than editorial
VERY TRUE! Just because it's editorial, doesn't mean that it can't be manipulated.

-Todd...

[Michael Chu]

Sorry...that's what I meant..PHOTOJOURNALISM :)

[Bob Chapman]

FWIW, "Racer" magazine got lambasted last year for a doctored IRL photo in which the Nazareth grandstands (and fans) appeared to tower endlessly above the track.

Quick search on Yahoo! - http://www.f500.org/pipermail/f500/2005q1/014014.html

If I remember correctly, it was in their photos-of-the-year edition (but don't quote me on that).

[John Thawley]

Wow... that's pretty pathetic. Not even a good job.

And... heh hmm, I actually did this for a track brochure some years back... mine wasn't nearly this obvious. I had to fill lower stands and had pleny of real crowd to work with. And... as I said, this was for a commercial piece. So, it wasn't like we were falsifying for journalism sake... we were doing it for capitalistic gain. LOL

JT

[Jeff Boerio]

Yes, photojournalism is the correct term, not editorial. My bad. Or maybe we can attribute it to Hajj anyway :D

JT, in your case, that's different. Capitalistic gain ... I love it!

- Jeff

[Jason Jenkins]

FWIW, "Racer" magazine got lambasted last year for a doctored IRL photo in which the Nazareth grandstands (and fans) appeared to tower endlessly above the track.

Quick search on Yahoo! - http://www.f500.org/pipermail/f500/2005q1/014014.html

If I remember correctly, it was in their photos-of-the-year edition (but don't quote me on that).

Do bring this into a Motorsports perspective...

From Bob's link if you dig a bit further.
http://www.champcarfanatics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23022

[Mark Delbrueck]

Wow... that's pretty pathetic. Not even a good job.


Don't sugar coat it, that edit is wretched!

[Bob Chapman]

And... heh hmm, I actually did this for a track brochure some years back... mine wasn't nearly this obvious. I had to fill lower stands and had pleny of real crowd to work with. And... as I said, this was for a commercial piece. So, it wasn't like we were falsifying for journalism sake... we were doing it for capitalistic gain. LOL

JT

In the summer of 2004, one of my assignments was to shoot Phoenix Grand-Am for RX.com. The #1 (most important) photo on their shot list was an image of the front-straight with their car out in front and some open space before a pack of cars following. It was for a trade show and would be used as a 104' x 16' banner (yes, that's feet, not inches!). One key to the photo was that they wanted to see the crowd of fans in the front-straight grandstand.

Crowd of fans?! Phoenix Grand-Am?! LOL! The other funny thing is that I received the shot list two hours before the first practice session of the weekend. ...OK, it didn't really seem all that funny at the time (Despite that, they were a really great client and a pretty interesting company to boot).

Anyway, the final was a composite of six shots (two images of the front-straight, one image of a checkered flag, one image of the RX.com car, two images of the cars that followed).

http://www.autosportimage.com/misc_photography/misc/phoenix_front_straight_final_b.jpg

Is it a believable "photo"? No, of course not. But I was told that the 104' banner made for a very compelling visual at the trade show. The most time consuming part of the project, though, was creating a believable "crowd". Below is a (hasty) composite of the two front-straight shots, so you can see my starting point. Note that I dropped the upper section of the grandstand down to track level because I had more fans to work with there.

http://www.autosportimage.com/misc_photography/misc/phoenix_front_straight_composite.jpg

Anyway, I'm with you JT. If it's a commercial client, I'm following the money, and to hell with reality. Reality doesn't always put food in my son's mouth. However, I'd have had a difficult time justifying what Racer did, and I believe there's no justification for what the Reuters photographer did.

[Daniel Buck]

wow, I could see the clone marks on that smoke from the little thumb nail... thats pretty bad!

[Erik Anderson]

I'm fairly certain my 2 year old could do a better job of cloning than that guy! I guess you don't HAVE to know photoshop to be a photographer!

[Austin Langley]

http://www.autosportimage.com/misc_photography/misc/phoenix_front_straight_final_b.jpg



http://www.autosportimage.com/misc_photography/misc/phoenix_front_straight_composite.jpg

Excellent job with that composit Bob. Could have fooled me if I didn't know it was a comp. I think comps like this are fine when you have no other means of getting the shot and they're not using the image to support a story.

[Steve Demmitt]

sad to say, but there goes his career

[Todd Corzett]

sad to say, but there goes his career
Considering it's not the first time he's edited an image in such a fashion (the other one I saw was of a fighter jet dropping flares, he cloned one into three) it's not all that sad. "Removing sensor dust" my ass!

-Todd...