A photojournalist’s goal should be to supply the publications they work for with the best possible image that accurately reflects what they saw. If readers are to trust newspapers and magazines they must know that the images and information provided are an accurate representation of what really happened.
But what is too much post-processing? For that matter when we were working with B&W film what was too much dogging and burning in the darkroom before a print was produced?
What is a material addition or subtraction to the content of an original digital capture? Was the digital capture altered by the image creator in the placement of a light or by the choice of angle used to take the picture? And, if so, to what degree does that alter the viewer perception?
It is all in the eye or the beholder.
At the
World Press Photo of the Year 2014 competition recently, 22% of the final 92 stories and single images that were being considered for photo of the year were disqualified for alterations that broke the contests post-processing rules. (The finalists were asked to send the unprocessed files for comparison and analysis during the penultimate round of the judging.)
The contest’s Managing Director Lars Boering said, “This year’s jury was very disappointed to discover how careless some photographers had been in post-processing their files for the contest. When this meant a material addition or subtraction in the content of the image, it lead to the images being rejected from the contest.”
What Do Editors Want?
When it comes stock photography, it seems the rules are very different. Recently, in the Albany, New York Times Union Thomas Palmer, who is charged with “exposing contextual misuse in photojournalism,” published a story entitled “
Renegade misuse of stock photo by N.Y. Daily News creates classroom from Hell.”
In this story Palmer points out that the New York Daily News used the same photo of a classroom to illustrate six different stories. With caption alterations the newspaper’s online readers were given the misleading belief that this classroom was ground zero for several newsmaking events.
In fact, the picture was supplied by iStock photo and taken by Gilles Glod, an ESL teacher, who photographed the empty classroom in Luxembourg.
Palmer also found the same photo used to illustrate education stories produced by other publications including Yahoo! News, WIBC in Indianapolis, WGRZ in Buffalo and Chacha.com. The photo is often used without the iStock credit or any indication that it is a stock photo.
Palmer’s story is worth reading to get a little sense of how much misinformation is being foisted on the public. If editors are only looking for beautiful, attention grabbing illustrations, not accuracy, why should photojournalists be held to a higher standard?