Ethics of Photoediting

[gdmcclintock]

A photograph, made with film, is a sample of the real world? What a bizarre notion!

Part of the problem is that the images in question are not actually photographs by the standards of APUG, I think. Making pictures out of electronic files isn't photography and the resultant pictures don't have the special relationship real photographs have to subject matter.

People get fooled by calling them photographs instead of pictures. Pictures that emerge from a digital environment have the same relationship to subject matter as paintings and drawings. And no one, even the most naive viewer, expects paintings and drawings to be samples of the real world.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Hurrell's images were heavily retouched. It was part of the art of photography.

I have some old retouching manuals that describe techniques that date to the era of glass plate negs, and the image alteration that could be done by someone who knew how to draw was quite drastic. One has a sample image where the subject's pockmarks and wrinkles are smoothed over, a cigarette is removed from his mouth, and an unattractively pointing finger is folded into the palm of his hand. Ever see a 19th-century photograph of a living child with sharp hands? Those hands were most likely drawn on the neg with pencil and knife. There was a very good example on Mike Johnston's blog a while back of an early 20th-century sports photo showing a sharp image of someone catching a football--all the lines are pencil work.

Certainly, thanks to Photoshop, one no longer has to go to art school to achieve these effects, but the effects for the most part aren't new.

[Helinophoto]

Is this not the same as Photoshop?

Well....the end result is "retouched" though.
From the book "Hollywood Portraits Classic shots and how to make them", they explain pretty well how specialists would sit with strong magnifying glasses, drawing and scraping on the negatives to alter reality, that be, placing fake shadows behind subjects, altering backgrounds, altering reflections, smoothing skin etc.

You can read a little from the book for free here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9197694/Ho...w-to-make-them (page 9)

In all my editing on the digi side of things (and I often do a lot), I think the liquify-tool is the most radical and powerful tool, this tool has no analogue equivalent as far as i know. (This is the tool you use in high-fashion stuff to create those anorectic and unrealistic looking photos of models). Pixel pushing I call it, hard to do on a negative

And I am not sure if men alone are to blame for the hysteria concerning skinny models; After a few years of hearing how women talk about other women, I am sure that a lot of the blame for body-hysteria can be blamed on womens endless effort to out-beautify their friends and rivals.

Most (grown) men I know, actually appreciate a normal woman with a normal shape, not sports-illlustrated babes or skinny fashion models, while women are quick to point out a fat bum, love handles and sagging boobs on their "sisters" ^^

[keithwms]

Are you serious? They were posed, probably the most obvious form of manipulation.

Well I think you're making this about an entirely different subject. Sure, we compose and that does have the essence of 'pose' in it- we select what we want to have in the photogrpah and thereby influence how the scene is perceived. fine.

But manipulation of the sort described in the article is at a very different level.

Consider someone with a big nose. By traditional means, you can: pick focal length to manipulate the nose/ears ratio; play with posing to de-emphasize it; use light to arrange the fill and shadows favourably; use film/dev/grade etc to select favourable contrast. What about actually making the nose smaller? To do that by traditional means, you'd have to resort to a paper neg and actually redraw the nose. But that is a very limited technique... imagine trying to do it on a colour shot and doing it quickly enough to have it on the cover of some tabloid later the same day. That is where things are now... we've seen missiles cloned into photographs, we've seen Prime Minister's bellies photosurgically improved, we've seen manga-like women adorning magazine covers and billboards, where does it end?!

[MDR]

Love this quote by Arnold Newman: "Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world." and I find that it fits this discussion wonderfully

Dominik

[Maris]

A photograph, made with film, is a sample of the real world? What a bizarre notion!

Actually yes. Do the sums. A 8x10 sheet of 100 ISO film gets about 10 ^ -23 Kilograms heavier at the moment of exposure. All that extra mass came from the subject matter and nowhere else. That's why camera are made light-tight.

[keithwms]

LOL

Gosh I love physics humour.

[CGW]

Well I think you're making this about an entirely different subject. Sure, we compose and that does have the essence of 'pose' in it- we select what we want to have in the photogrpah and thereby influence how the scene is perceived. fine.

But manipulation of the sort described in the article is at a very different level

Manipulation to alter perception is, well, still manipulation. It's really not a matter of degree or kind. Composing, cropping, and posing are all manipulation. What about the elephant that Roger Fenton cropped out of his famous Crimea shots of the Valley of the Shadow of Death? Could have been one there, right? Still think you're also being willfully naive about the degree of manipulation in pre-Adobe photography.

[cliveh]

Actually yes. Do the sums. A 8x10 sheet of 100 ISO film gets about 10 ^ -23 Kilograms heavier at the moment of exposure. All that extra mass came from the subject matter and nowhere else. That's why camera are made light-tight.

Can you reveal the source of this calculated evidence?

[Maris]

Can you reveal the source of this calculated evidence?

I'm the source. The calculation is not particularly difficult although it requires some knowledge of basic physics. The number is of an "order of magnitude" accuracy because it involves recasting photometric quantities into energy units and assumes some values for a "typical" film. Annoyingly, I can't find a reference to anyone else having done the sums. I'd appreciate it if you or someone else on APUG would run the numbers and check my answer.