To keep it out of the soapbox.......

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120363429707884255.html?mod=yhoofront

I'm going to watch this one for a while before putting my two centavos into the game.

Whew! That's going to be hard to do---this article has soapbox written all over it when it comes to the use of PS.

It's obvious though, the real issue here is the dishonesty of the photographer, IMO---it's indisputable. Made much more tempting by the technology of the day.

Nothing all that surprising.

One would have a hard time making a case for China being at the forefront of environmental protection for reasons far greater that this kind of PS manipulation.

As I get older, I realize that one benefit of advancing age is that I probably will not outlive most of the current endangered species - someone else will have to write the obits.

I think there's also a version with a great white shark lunging at the antelopes from the driver's carriage! Journalistic integrity, for oxymoron of the year!

I seem to remember a story about a Reuters photographer doing similar recently (was it a Beirut photo where smoke from airstrikes was exaggerated?), or another where John Kerry and Jane Fonda together at a 70s anti-war rally was faked? I don't think this is unique to China or particularly new.

With advances in software and technology, and 'news' editors demanding ever more sensational pictures, IMO these incidents are only going to increase. Yes, there were fakes made when film was dominant, but it was a lot more difficult and fakes were more easily discovered.

I seem to remember a story about a Reuters photographer doing similar recently (was it a Beirut photo where smoke from airstrikes was exaggerated?)

You are correct on the Reuters/Beirut photo. As if war is not horrible enough – it was made to look like the apocalypse itself…

g'day Jason
maybe this scene really happened, maybe the photographer "enhanced" the image to better express the narrative, a not entirely unusual thing in any form of imaging

Ray

Looks to me as if they're running like hell away from the train in fear.

Murray

I think I saw Elvis in one of the train windows.

The more these situations come out the more I wonder about the desire, among the press, to go totally digital. Yes, it is possible to doctor an analog photo but, if questions arise, the original negative can be looked at. There is no original in the digital process, to examine.

I think this is more about journalistic integrity and succumbing to state pressure. This guy is a state photog and there is no freedom of the press to work with. He was told what he should get, and I bet he was told to do whatever it takes to get it. I have no love of the way china does business. I have known a few American archaeologists who were pressured to report what the government wanted them to report. We will never know if this photog was told to do it, or not. But, it is clear that his reputation and career are gone. The government does not like getting caught.

g'day Jason
maybe this scene really happened, maybe the photographer "enhanced" the image to better express the narrative, a not entirely unusual thing in any form of imaging

Ray

Sadly, there is no maybe. The "photograph" is a composite, that displays a "reality" that never happened. The photographer was finally forced to admit it never happened.

Expressive photographers, including me, manipulate images all the time, but don't present them as factual. The crux of the matter is that the lie of the content of the "photograph" was presented as "reality", in a journalistic sense, to further a specific agenda. That action is unforgivable, and a clear breach of journalistic integrity and ethics, no matter the technology or aesthetics involved.

In an interesting turnabout - this morning both of the NYC tabloids published an admittedly doctored photo of Barak Obama showing him dressed in Muslim garb. These 'bloids are very competitive and both used the term "Smear" in describing the manipulated photo.

But the question I have is: Should the media ever knowingly publish a doctored photo even if it indicates that it is such?

In a world with scanners etc. isn't publishing such a picture simply an invitation for others to further spread it around - perhaps w/o the disclaimer that it is a doctored image?

George, the Obama photograph is not doctored and neither was the garb specifically 'muslim'. He was pictured wearing traditional Somali dress during a visit to Kenya (Kenya being his father's birthplace) in 2006. So what? Many politicians have done the same when visiting other countries.

good points Jason, but do we know the "reality" never happened

during the First World War one of my country's greatest ever documentary photographers, Frank Hurley, was censured for printing multiple negs, his defence was that the pictures from single negs did not show the entire story as it occured but composites did

Ray

Ray,
I cut a bit of slack for Hurley due to the ortho film, clunky gear and contemporaneous tradition of war artists re-creating accounts of the battlefields in paint with dramatic licence. He did like to insert skies to fill the big white space that was otherwise there. I think we have to judge this case on its merits. A big photographic lie was told and it was exposed. A potential reality is that Obama likes to dress as a woman and hang out in tranny bars. Let's composite that and put it on the cover of Time? (keep stirring )

A few interesting links for anyone interested in the Hurley attitude:
http://www.marquis-kyle.com.au/mt/.htm
http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/picturescatalogue (type hurley and composite in the search bar)

g'day Tony

Cap'n Hurley did more than add a sky occasionally, he was also known to add shell bursts, aeroplanes, human figures, in fact whatever he thought was necessary to tell the story of what he experienced

there is, of course, a difference between depicting a "potential" reality and portraying an experienced reality

Ray

that would never happen with film! ;)

that would never happen with film! ;)

g'day el

"never happen with film", did you read the above?

of course it happens with film, and glass plates and paper negs and any other genre of imaging and representation

even without compositing no photograph is a truthful representation, the photographer uses many skills and techniques to a show a particular narrative whether it be true or false

Ray

I cut a bit of slack for Hurley due to the ortho film

Tony,

If it happens with film don't you think it is just as wrong. Portraying a black and white photograph with tones that in no way represent any reality to the actual scene is a poetic license to veer from reality. It is not realistic tonally but it is quite pure from an optical perspective in that the lens is recording everything it sees with precision.

Depicting a scene with objects present that were not present when the shutter was released can be poetic license, I guess. I mean presenting a photograph with a sky from one negative and a landscape from another, is ok with me but I would like it represented as such.

But in photojournalism there is an expectation of "truth" from the viewers, IMO. And when that expectation is falsely represented, well, it's just plain unethical and wrong, regardless of circumstances.

Just my two cents.
Chuck

g'day el

"never happen with film", did you read the above?

of course it happens with film, and glass plates and paper negs and any other genre of imaging and representation

even without compositing no photograph is a truthful representation, the photographer uses many skills and techniques to a show a particular narrative whether it be true or false

Ray

I guess you missed the tongue-in-cheek wink at the end of that...

I guess you missed the tongue-in-cheek wink at the end of that...

a little hard to see those inflections on a web page

a little hard to see those inflections on a web page
;):o:rolleyes::D:mad::(:confused::):p

oh, ok, i actually didn't see the winky wanka smiley thingy, i don't use them or look for them, being a text based site i thought it better to use good verbage to express an opinion

Nice to see the Chinese learning to use the Adobe Photoshop Suite effectively.