Blue Flower

@Marie LC: Thank you. It was growing from my neighbors yard.

@Rabbit: I edited my original comments. My tone was no doubt too abrasive. I apologize if my comments seemed insulting, as I did not intend them to be (but I do get carried away sometimes).

I guess I must quibble with your terms. I don't believe there is any such thing as a "perfect pretty picture," since such a perception is entirely subjective and dependent upon the taste and interpretation of the individual viewer. In this case I actually liked the unaltered version of the firemen much better than the altered version. In the other two photos I can't even tell a difference between the altered and unaltered versions. In fact, the differences for these are well within printing tolerances so the issue of alternation for these two images seems absurd to me. In my mind, that pretty much just leaves the firemen photo as an object of discussion.

I was going to argue with you and JoeB about the details of the case but upon reflection I don't think they're particularly relevant. What you seem to be saying is that a single still photographic image constitutes an objective truth that is unique in all of journalism --since the printed word and the moving images that are part of modern journalism obviously are not objective. That inherent within the single frame is a representation of an objective reality, and that any alteration of the information within that frame falsifies that reality, and that this is true of every single image, independent of the context in which the image was acquired or the context in which it is presented.

There I think is the crux of the issue. Your reply suggests you believe that an unaltered photo --by which you really just mean unaltered after the image is taken since even the simplest photograph is a alteration of reality-- contains within it a whole objective truth or reality. I do not. It is my contention that the entire photographic process is completely subjective, from the point before which an image is taken, when you choose the camera, lens, and technical attributes of how you capture the image, to the presentation of the image for viewing, the context in which it is represented, and the interpretation of the viewer.

I'd say that every photograph is a lie in the objective sense, and that the "truth" of a photograph can range in subjectivity from some point approximating a partial truth of some kind all the way to the point of being a whole lie, without any out-of-camera manipulation of the image. Furthermore, I contend that regardless of how objective a photographic image may be, the subjectivity of the editorial choices pertaining to the publication of images in general are far more significant than any particular image or set of images. For example, our reality is falsified to a much greater degree by the editorial choice not to publish images of civilian deaths in Gaza than it is by an image that has been altered to change the background, or to remove or add something to the image.

In other words, the supposed objectivity of photographic journalism is a myth or illusion (and there are plenty of famous pre-digital images in the history of journalism that demonstrate this, from the flag raising on Iwo Jima to the Kent State shooting photo). I don't think the standards that apply to still images should be any different than the standards that apply to print or video journalism.

An altered image can lie or it can tell a larger truth than an unaltered image. Some wise man once said something to the effect that artists use a lie to tell the truth and politicians use the truth to tell a lie, and though I grant that journalists should have to account to higher standards than artists, if "objective truth" is the final objective of journalism, then the same principle should still apply. Writers choose the words they use and what to include or leave out of an article. Video clips are often heavily edited or simply not shown in their entirety. In neither case is the viewer presented with a context by which to judge the veracity of what is being represented. If the same standards were applied to video as to still images editing would be prohibited and clips would only be shown in their entirety. We'd see, for example, the supposed "journalist" buddy-buddy with his subject before the interview began and the interpretation of the interview would be left to the viewer. A still image should be judged by the extent to which it is "truthful," not merely by whether or not it has been "edited."

Ideally, an image that has been "edited" should be so represented, and other contextual information presented so the viewer can judge the veracity of an image for himself. Of course this isn't done for anything in journalism, not in print, and certainly not in video journalism. My main complaint is that by pretending that still photographs are not subjective as long as they are not "manipulated" outside the camera, the much larger subjectivity and "manipulation" of reality applied throughout every other part of the journalistic process is falsely represented as objective.

@JoeB: I edited my original comments. My tone was no doubt too abrasive. I apologize if my comments seemed insulting, as I did not intend them to be (but I do get carried away sometimes).

Actually, I liked the unaltered version of the firemen better than the altered version. In the other two photos I can't even tell a difference between the altered and unaltered versions. In fact, the differences for these are well within printing tolerances so the issue of alteration for these two images seems absurd to me. In my mind, that pretty much just leaves the firemen photo as an object of discussion.

I was going to argue with you about the details of the case but upon reflection I don't think they're particularly relevant. What you seem to be saying is that a single still photographic image constitutes an objective truth that is unique in all of journalism --since the printed word and the moving images that are part of modern journalism obviously are not objective. That inherent within the single frame is a representation of an objective reality, and that any alternation of the information within that frame falsifies that reality, and that this is true of every single image, independent of the context in which the image was acquired or the context in which it is presented.

There I think is the crux of the issue. Your reply suggests you believe that an unaltered photo --by which you really just mean unaltered after the image is taken since even the simplest photograph is a alteration of reality-- contains within it a whole objective truth or reality. I do not. It is my contention that the entire photographic process is completely subjective, from the point before which an image is taken, when you choose the camera, lens, and technical attributes of how you capture the image, to the presentation of the image for viewing, the context in which it is represented, and the interpretation of the viewer.

I'd say that every photograph is a lie in the objective sense, and that the "truth" of a photograph can range in subjectivity from some point approximating a partial truth of some kind all the way to the point of being a whole lie, without any out-of-camera manipulation of the image. Furthermore, I contend that regardless of how objective a photographic image may be, the subjectivity of the editorial choices pertaining to the publication of images in general are far more significant than any particular image or set of images. For example, our reality is falsified to a much greater degree by the editorial choice not to publish images of civilian deaths in Gaza than it is by an image that has been altered to change the background, or to remove or add something to the image.

In other words, the supposed objectivity of photographic journalism is a myth or illusion (and there are plenty of famous pre-digital images in the history of journalism that demonstrate this, from the flag raising on Iwo Jima to the Kent State shooting photo). I don't think the standards that apply to still images should be any different than the standards that apply to print or video journalism.

An altered image can lie or it can tell a larger truth than an unaltered image. Writers choose the words they use and what to include or leave out of an article. Video clips are often heavily edited or simply not shown in their entirety. In neither case is the viewer presented with a context by which to judge the veracity of what is being represented. If the same standards were applied to video as to still images editing would be prohibited and clips would only be shown in their entirety. We'd see, for example, the supposed "journalist" buddy-buddy with his subject before the interview began and the interpretation of the interview would be left to the viewer. A still image should be judged by the extent to which it is "truthful," not merely by whether or not it has been "edited."

Ideally, an image that has been "edited" should be so represented, and other contextual information presented so the viewer can judge the veracity of an image for himself. Of course this isn't done for anything in journalism, not in print, and certainly not in video journalism. My main complaint is that by pretending that still photographs are not subjective as long as they are not "manipulated" outside the camera, the much larger subjectivity and "manipulation" of reality applied throughout every other part of the journalistic process is falsely represented as objective.

@Pascale: Thank you.

@Elena Kotrotsou: thank you.

@Ronnie 2¢: Me too. Too easy for me to do I'm afraid --get carried away that is.

@Damon Schreiber: On the other hand, I can't bring myself to argue that the door should be entirely open for photographers to create the image that they want by cloning in our out certain details, or compositing two photos into one.

I wouldn't describe that as my position either. But let's take a simple example. A guy with a DLSR rips off a three-shot (group image of three people) at 10 fps. Though everyone is smiling and happy, in no single image are all three people caught smiling and with their eyes open at once. So, the photographer picks the best shot of the ten, where one subject has eyes closed, and clones their open eyes from a previous frame. Is that photo a lie? I don't think so. Should that alteration be allowed? I think so for two reasons: 1) it is truthful in the scope of what is being portrayed; 2) technological limits have essentially altered an objective truth that is regained by the cloning process.

In regards to #2, some newspapers are already equipping their photographers with HD Video cameras, where a photographer will have 30 frames to choose from out of every one second shot. So in the hypothetical three-shot, because he had 20 more frames out of the same second to choose from, he has a greater opportunity for telling a lie as well as telling the truth (as he may, say, catch a frame with none of the three smiling). And of course, as a different consideration, this essentially does in the notion of the "decisive moment" --representing another conceptual change about "photography" as a product of new technology, along with digital post-processing.

And yes, I agree, there must be a limit to what is acceptable alteration. In either case, any editor could look at the series and determine if the altered photograph is telling the "truth." I'm just suggesting that the limit should be a reference to the truth and not an arbitrary limit that is essentially a reference to old technological limitations. What's the difference between this process and a reporter selecting quotes from an interview tape? Or more to the point, interpreting what is said in an interview tape? In both cases, no determination of objective truth can be made without reference to the complete source material (if then).

Reporters, for example, can edit interviews to tell the story they wish to tell, but they can't put words in a subject's mouth. They can't print lies about people (without the possibility of a libel suit). They can't invent stories out of thin air.

This is really only true in theory. Except in some very extreme circumstances, if a reporter misquotes something I said there is in reality nothing I can do about it. If I was a public figure I might have the financial resources to take legal action but it would be even harder to make a case for libel. In any case, it is very easy to lie about someone by selective representation of facts (quoting out of context is a classic) --so only a very stupid reporter or editor is going to get caught in a libel suit. Furthermore, most of the lies in the media are not subject to libel actions and don't have any negative consequences. Also, as corrupt as the media is in general, they mostly lie by omission, so I suspect that the proportion of outright lies is relatively small.

And actually, the media has a long history of concocting stories out of thin air. Sometimes they get caught. I suspect that most of the time they don't. But more to the point, something like 80% of what passes for "news" is nothing more than the regurgitation of press releases provided to the media by self-interested parties. These are essentially stories made up from thin air, and this media that is supposedly so interested in the truth of still photographs NEVER tells you when their stories are derived from press releases.

"In documentary photojournalism, it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way (electronically, or in the darkroom) that deceives the public."

Actually, I don't have any problem with this rule. This is essentially my own position. My argument is over the interpretation. In the specific case of Schneider, I don't think he violated this rule.

Some people can be more objective than others, but there is no such thing as an objective human being. We are all the products of our backgrounds, experiences, and intelligence. Objective journalism is a fiction. I think it is a fiction that should be dispensed with in favor of much greater transparency. Articles derived from corporate and government press releases should be so labeled. The context of photographs should be provided. The potential biases of reporters should be identified. For example, every report by, say, Andrea Mitchell, especially anything political and most especially, economic, should disclose the fact that she is married to Alan Greenspan. Make the process transparent, and let the readers/viewers decide for themselves whether or not something is "objective" or "true."

Of course, this isn't going to happen, because the media is not really interested in objective truth, it is concerned with promoting a self-serving narrative that satisfies various economic and political objectives.

@grant: I may post some more. I intended too for this past weekend, but ran out of processing steam.

@Eleftheria: Thank you.

@Damon Schreiber: If the goal of journalism is to inform and educate, then two wrongs don't make a right.

I don't think that is the actual goal, though it may be the theory taught in journalism school. I think the number one goal, especially today, is to make money. If the goal was really to inform and educate, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq, because an informed public wouldn't have supported it. One reason the media doesn't inform and educate is because it doesn'tt want to alienate the public. Telling the truth means pissing people off. When you're in business you lose money when you piss people off. I'd say the primary goal of our major media is to help maximize returns by pissing off as few people as possible.

Frankly, other than diversifying media ownership and creating a more competitive environment, I don't know how the current system can be improved other than by greater transparency. The influences under which the current system have evolved can't be changed by fiat or new rules. When I write a report as an engineer, I have to state my assumptions up front --my biases so to speak. I'd like to see this kind of transparency across the board in the news media --be it with still photos, news reports, video, or editorial comment.

I think standard practice in news publications is to label excessively manipulated images as photo-illustrations.

What is "excessive manipulation?" I'd contend that this practice is mostly applied to manipulations that are already obvious, as cover. But I do agree with the practice, and think it should be applied whenever an image is altered. So, call an altered image an illustration instead of a photo --I support this kind of transparency. Do you really think that for 90% of the images published as news photos the general public is going to care that a telephone poll was removed from a background? When what is being depicted has more important implications, don't allow any significant alteration and call it a photo.

Unfortunately, I don't think the general public understands the distinction.

At the risk of being snarky, a standard based on the very limited understanding possible by the general public is not a workable standard. A very large part of the public doesn't understand the difference between CSI and how the police really operate; and they believe everything they see on Fox news or CNN. Based on my contact with non-photographers, or casual photographers (the kind that drop their film or memory cards off at the photoprocessor), they have no idea what standard is currently applied, and no concept of the limits of photography in depicting "reality." The standards have to be appropriate to the objectives of journalism and account for the technology used, and be determined and understood by the profession. I don't think what the general public understands, is, or can be, a factor.

"I don't mean to be argumentative, but I do enjoy the idea that one must work within the limitations of a given form."

I won't argue for no limits, just limits appropriate to the objective. Some of the best films ever made, like Stalker, Solaris, and Andre Rublev, were made in Soviet Russia under very severe creative limitations.

The rule, quoted again in the articles you reference, is actually that no alteration be made that deceives the public. It sounds questionable whether or not Deitrich did that, though he supposedly deceived his editor. The famous Kent State photo was altered in just such a way as what Deitrich is accused of doing and I think this image is still accepted as a classic of photojournalism.

However, this article adds a new dimension to the discussion. You can bet that with the available technology, these alterations are being made far more often than they are detected (and I've seen plenty of evidence that "news" photos are being faked in camera as well, as they were in the Russian/Georgian conflict, and no doubt, every other context where money or politics are involved). I've seen any number of photos that strain credulity, though since they are not "impossible" I can't be certain they were manipulated. But, for example, I saw a shot off the Boston Globe site of a howitzer shell just leaving the barrel of an artillery piece. It looked fake to me, so I did the math, so to speak. At the frame rate of a pro DLSR, and given the muzzle velocity of this particular artillery piece, the chance that a shell would be caught in the position depicted is very very low. And I wondered about the lighting too. I suspect the shell was photoshopped, but if it was, does that make the image a lie? I don't think it changes the objective truth of the photo at all.

Such alterations were being made back in the darkroom days when they were far more difficult. So, where are the editors? How is it that an editor is not looking over the digital equivalent of a contact sheet and choosing which photos are going to be published? I'm a little suspicious about the editor's role in all this. I suspect the editors are sort of like art dealers in regard to fakes and let them pass as long as no one calls them on it.

I think it can be argued that the current system actually encourages deception, since alterations can be easily made, and photographers know they are going to be unreasonably punished for them. Furthermore, since changes can be easily made and good ones are hard to detect, I think there is tremendous incentive for photographers to cheat, whether for economic or political reasons. Outright prohibition just makes it easier for the dishonest ones to cheat.

@bluechameleon: Thank you. I probably got carried away with the debate.

@MadScientist: No, my knowledge of the case doesn't extend beyond the links on this page. I think the reaction by many is the product of conditioning. We all suffer from it to one degree or another. My father, for instance, was an intelligent and well read man, yet he never escaped some of the conditioning he received in the public schools of his era, even after learning that much of the history he'd been taught in school was false. I have to work to overcome some of what was ingrained in my youth even though I know it is false.

Much of what passes for "common wisdom," or even "professional wisdom," is simply false. I see it all the time as an engineer. Engineers cling to a belief that has no basis in fact, even in the face of contrary evidence, because it is accepted "wisdom" that was perpetuated from a time when the reality was still undetermined. I grew up with the cliche that the camera doesn't lie. That is one of those phrases that is perpetuated as some kind of objective reality even though, upon just a little bit of reflection, it is obviously and absurdly false.

Change comes with great difficulty. And there are many reasons for the photographic profession to cling to the past beyond conditioning. One reason I think is the desire to create some kind of "ceremony" that distinguishes the higher practitioners of the photographic faith from just any dude with a camera. I think some of the resistance to Photoshop is because it is so accessible to everyone in comparison to darkroom work. Darkroom work helped keep out the "riff-raff" so to speak.

And what's the biggest difference between a newspaper photographer and a lot of the people posting on Aminus? ACCESS. Today I think access is the biggest single factor that separates the pros from the rest of us. So, naturally, there is an inclination in the profession to preserve a set of distinctions that justifies that access. And btw, access is one of the most powerful tools used by the powerful to control media narratives. Ask too hard a question in the White House press room and you don't get invited back. Challenge the presidential candidate in print and you don't get to ride on the plane.

@Damon Schreiber: I agree with your A thru D.

@Rabbit: I don't really disagree with anything you're saying here. I was looking at this particular issue strictly from the theoretical perspective of how still-frame photography seems to be singled out among all the other realms of journalism for what seems to be a rather inflexible interpretation of what is "honest." I don't even object to the actual rule that an image should not deceive the public. I think that's a good rule in fact, but it appears that it is being very rigidly interpreted (though I suspect, only after public attention).

As far as Schneider himself goes, I also agree that he was apparently deceptive in his submissions for competition, and may have deceived his editor (this claim I take with a grain of salt because I suspect that there are editors who are letting things like Schneider's alterations pass, pretending not to know, and then reacting only when it becomes a public issue). I'm not really defending Schneider --he is subject to the rules of employment and currently accepted practices of the profession-- I'm just arguing for those practices to be more flexible. However, understanding how the rules are currently applied, if I was working as a photojournalist, I wouldn't alter an image as Schneider altered the fireman shot (though probably any photojournalist could be fired if the other two shots are the standard for manipulation since many white balance adjustments produce a greater color change than you see in those images). Of course, I wouldn't have altered the fireman shot like he did even without any rules because like you, I think the altered background looks fake --and ugly.

As far as photo competitions go there is no doubt in my mind that far more egregious cheating than what Schneider did is widespread. Just look through the images at JPG magazine --where images are supposed to be no more processed than what a "news" photo should be. Awhile back the Photoshop Disasters site showed a contest winner from National Geographic it says is heavily photoshopped. Contests with rules that require unaltered images should have very clearly defined rules (along with example images that illustrate what is and is not acceptable), and they should also make a greater effort to prevent cheating --but cheating is a problem, and I don't know how you can prevent this kind of cheating, other than some method of identifying an unaltered original that must be submitted with the final image.

BTW, Here's the recent photoshopped contest winner at National Geographic. I originally saw a larger version but the photoshopping is a lot more obvious to me at this smaller size. Note if you follow the link from the site above to the NG site the comments after the NG announcement on the contest question other contest images.

@dang: I really want to read this but haven't had the chance yet. I've read about Migrant Mother photo before, in detail. You can go all the way back to the infancy of photography for instances of "staged" images. Thanks for the links.

@dang: You might find the Errol Morris essays on photography interesting. In particular, this one on a famous image from the Crimean War.

Also, note that with regard to the faked Iranian missile photo: the obviously faked image ran on the FRONT PAGE of many American newspapers. The editors were either too incompetent to detect the fraud, didn't care because they liked the photo (or perhaps both), or didn't care because they had a political agenda (such as creating the public perception that Iran is a threat to the US). That this fraud, and many others, are usually detected by blogs of one kind or another, says a great deal about the supposed professionalism, honesty, and expertise of our "journalists."

@Amir: If I remember it was your use of borders that got me started.