Photographic dishonesty: The age of photoshop and "photographs"

kurt765 wrote in post #9868461
I recall a photo done by Art Wolfe with a bunch of zebras where he copied some zebras around the image and then still called it a photograph. Art has some amazing work but in this case what he presented, to me, was a lie. It was the photograph he wished he could have taken but didn't get, and to present it as a photograph is deception. It was a composite.

What constitutes a photograph and what constitutes something else? Images that are used for advertising are going to be heavily manipulated composites, but to present a composited image as a nature photograph to me is completely dishonest. Where do you draw the line?

But where do you draw the line?

Last summer I captured an excellent shot of a young (teen) dancer in perfect position mid leap.

Except I clipped the toes off her trailing foot.

Thanks to the clone tool I completed her foot and composited an extra 10% of the background from another photo to better put her in the frame.

Nothing about the photo is a lie (her toes and the background were really there - honest), but it was a good bit of photo manipulation to "get them back" since they didn't make it into the original capture.

My photojournalism professor is a very actively working professional and he said that the Associated Press has gotten so strict about keeping images exactly was they were in real life that you WILL be fired for burning and dodging stuff except for a very few very specific situations.

He told us that since those photoshopped images from Iraq and Afghanistan came out, all publications have really locked down what a photographer is allowed to do to their photos. Even stuff that was more than acceptable in the film days, they don't let them do now.

Sam6644 wrote in post #9869213
My photojournalism professor is a very actively working professional and he said that the Associated Press has gotten so strict about keeping images exactly was they were in real life that you WILL be fired for burning and dodging stuff except for a very few very specific situations.

He told us that since those photoshopped images from Iraq and Afghanistan came out, all publications have really locked down what a photographer is allowed to do to their photos. Even stuff that was more than acceptable in the film days, they don't let them do now.

Yeah, but we aren't talking exclusively about Photojournalism. When it comes to that, I agree with your professor. Otherwise, it's a moot point.

People act like successfully creating an authentic looking contrivance isn't as much of an art as photography itself. Photographs are just something you look at. If completely changing an image is going to result in an image that is more pleasing to the eye, then so be it.

Myself, personally, I just want to be entertained when I look at a picture.

I think its all personal taste.

In PJ, Less is More and None (beyond WB and Sharpening) is probably the best course of action

In Art, so long as the boundaries are understood or stated (thinking here of juried shows or comps) then it falls on the photographer/artist to be upfront and honest in their own assesment of what they've created and how they acheived it.

This is an area where art shows / photography exhibits are struggling right now. Two of the largest art groups in the metro Phoenix area are currently having real difficulty coming to terms with the concepts of Photo Art, Manipulated Images, Digital Creations, etc...

In the below example, even though the moon was in the shot, it was just too small to bring any impact to the image since it was shot with a wide angle. I decided to clone it out. Another option would have been to paste in another shot of a slightly larger full moon. Either way, how would this manipulation be viewed? Is taking out something that's there (even though it doesn't add any interest to the image) any more acceptable than adding something that wasn't there to begin with? How much of reality has to be presented to be considered "reality"?

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

20droger wrote in post #9868534
I once watched a couple of professional nature photographers photographing hummingbirds for a famous (but unnamed here) birding magazine.

First, they chose the background they wanted, ignoring completely the surroundings.

Then they put in real, perfect flowers, native to the general area but, as it happens, not found in that particular canyon. These were cut flowers, like one would get from a specialty florist.

Then they set up slave strobes and reflectors around the flowers, set up their camera, took a series of test shots, made adjustments, etc.

Then they liberally spiked the flowers with honeydew and/or nectar, from a bottle.

If their need was for a perfect shot for a client then they did what they had to do to get the shot, and I have no problem with that.

If you want to look at photography as art then I see their actions as not being significantly different than the way you try to control an environment and model when you are shooting with a person. I don't have a problem with that.

If you want to call what they were doing "photojournalism" then everything except the baiting was crossing the line.

If you want to look at photography as being for the purpose of perfectly representing the reality of what was there then you're deluding yourself. The only thing an unedited photo can show you is what the camera could record. But the "truth" of something very often goes beyond the "reality" of it, and, just like with storytelling, I think that truth is the more important of the two.

One of my favorite photography authors wrote in one of his books that creating a photograph is about telling the story you want to tell, not a directly representing reality. Now his viewpoint is certainly one that won't be shared by everyone, but it is one that I happen to subscribe to.

kurt765 wrote in post #9868461
I'm curious to see where other photographers draw the line. In my day job, I make fake images. Composites. I layer things together that were not there. This may include adding an explosion to an image or replacing skies or making whole buildings and cities that were not there. This is what we call visual effects. It's fake.

When I do my photography, I keep things pure to perhaps old-school photographic principles. I never replace skies. I never paint things out. I stick to color correction and dodging / burning type techniques to try to create the same feeling as I had when I was there.

As an artist who's chosen medium is photography I can tell you this: THE AESTHETIC OF THE FINAL PRINT is the ONLY thing that matters.

I freely turn things around, add, remove, replace, whatever to match the feel of what I want to convey. Pressing the shutter is the first step - nothing more than gathering the raw material for what I will work on later. In and crafting an image the whole point is to convey a feeling - if that feeling is better conveyed by taking that raw material and manipulating it - then so be it. If I restrict myself to only what the sensor sees, and nothing else, then I am dramatically limiting myself and the tools that are available to me.

After all, painters have been doing this for centuries - where is the "ethical" moaning in that regard.*

The whole point is beauty. Beauty as I see it.

Rad

*I have a buddy, who is also an accomplished painter, and he likes to tell this story: It was about when he first moved to California, from the Midwest, some time in the 1960s. He was chomping at the bit to do some seascapes, so he set his easel up in Laguna, and as he painted he generated a small crowd of locals watching him. Feeling a little "on stage", he was exaggerating a bit, and using a flourish as he went along.

As he was painting, a gull perched on the rocks in the foreground, so - for his audience - he quickly painted in the gull. After a few minutes it flew away, so he painted it out. Then one of his audience asked him, "Watch'a gonna do when the tide goes out?"

I do what I want to get an image that pleases me, I couldn't care less what anyone else wants to call it. I've used skies that weren't even shot on the same continent as the rest of the picture. So what, use every tool available. The only exception is in editorial photography, I would follow the restrictions that apply there.

nicksan wrote in post #9869174
Wait, you mean thre is no such thing as B&W in real life? Dammit...I've been conned!!!

Seriously, it's all in the representation and purpose of the photograph. If you don't agree with Photoshop because someone can make a bland image look spectacular but you don't know Photoshop enough to do the same, then that's just jealousy on your part. Ain't nothing wrong with cloning out a tree, some trash, etc, as long as it's to fullfill a vision or it's wanted by a client.

If that photo was claimed to be a 100% real dipiction of the scene, then yeah, that's kind of fraudulent. (Someone mentioned police report and journalism...I agree)

Otherwise, chalk it up to art.

This man knows what he's talking about.

OTOH, the Professional Photographers of America has zero issues with it. If it started out in a camera, it competes in all PPA competitions as a "photograph." If it started out in some other form or media, it competes as "electronic art."

20droger wrote in post #9868534
....
First, they chose the background they wanted, ignoring completely the surroundings.

Then they put in real, perfect flowers, native to the general area but, as it happens, not found in that particular canyon. These were cut flowers, like one would get from a specialty florist.

Then they set up slave strobes and reflectors around the flowers, set up their camera, took a series of test shots, made adjustments, etc.

Then they liberally spiked the flowers with honeydew and/or nectar, from a bottle.

Then they waited.

And yes, they got some amazing photos of various hummingbirds "in their natural habitat." The shots looked great in the magazine (I bought a copy).

I consider that just as dishonest. And these were paid professional nature photographers.

Seeing is no longer believing.

And it never was. If you have ever seen a Disney nature film, you have most likely seen staged events. Some are so ingrained that if you ask a bunch of people they will believe it. For instance, the famous scene in Disney's White Wilderness where the poor lemmings were jumping off the cliff to commit suicide by drowning in the sea. It just doesn't happen. They fail to tell you that there were people up their tossing the lemmings off the cliff for the camera.

I'm sure all those nature shows stage events. Disney for sure, Wild Kingdom for sure, the dudes that filmed Earth and Life, I bet they too stage events.

I can appreciate the skill that goes with Photoshop photography. I don't know if it is or is not REAL photography. Don't really care.

I do not do much in the way of pp. Just enough to make things look right or as right as I can. It just isn't my thing and I am not as skilled as some people. I do a little contrast, WB, maybe sharpening or noisework if needed, and cropping of course. That's about it. And you can't really get away from those things.


One thing I never do with people photography is clone out facial imperfections. You are what you are and you look the way you look. I think its a little silly when someone asks me to take out a mole or a dimple they have had all of their life. Kind of denying reality isn't it. And since I never charge anyone for any work I do, I can get away with it. Of course if they were paying for something I would give them whatever they paid for.


Generally, if it takes more than five minutes to "fix" a photo, I move on to another one.

This is completely true.

All photographs are lies. A photograph can no more tell the whole truth of reality than a cup of seawater can tell the whole truth of the ocean.

Aside from uses for which pure recording is necessary, such as the aforementioned police forensic and photojournalism (and it's a knee-jerk reaction even in the latter), this is an issue only for you photographic johnny-come-latelies who don't know anything about the history of photography.

Major image manipulation began as soon as photography progressed to an interim negative process. One of the most famous portraits of Abraham Lincoln taken in 1860 actually has Lincoln's head composited on another senator's body. Another famous Matthew Brady photograph of all of Lincoln's generals had one general added who was not present when the original group photograph was shot.

Photographers began heavily manipulating photographs for artistic reasons from its very beginnings, specifically to combat the accusations from painters that photography was nothing but mechanistic reproduction--not "art." The early Pictorialism Movement was all about manipulating the image as much as was technically possible. That eventually caused its own backlash--the Realist Movement (championed by the f/64 Group)--but even the Realist Movement believed in manipulating the image by any means necessary to force the image as it looked to the eye, not as the camera reproduced it.

There was never an ethic of not manipulating images, not even in photojournalism. Some icons of photojournalism, such as W.Eugene Smith, were known to work on a single image for days in the darkroom to make it look as they saw it, regardless what the camera actually produced. Beyone manipulation, there was always the issue of posing subjects, moving objects, framing, timing, et cetera in photojournalism that made it clear that honesty was a matter of the photographer, not the camera. A dishonest photographer can lie about a situation just as easily by simply choosing the framing, direction, and timing of his shot.

Manipulation has always been part of the photographic art. This "get it right in the camera" stuff began only in the mid 60s as color took ascendence over black and white, and that was only because color was too difficult and expensive for most photographers to retouch. It was a matter of economics, not ethics.

So now Photoshop returns the art and craft to where it always had been. You newbies need to get over it.