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Photographic truth and manipulation February 23rd, 2009 We know photographs can be false yet we want them to be true. Indeed, the desire for photographic veracity has persisted, perhaps even intensified, even as knowledge about image manipulation becomes more widespread. Reflecting on the Oscar ceremonies, MediaGuardian has documented the widespread use of Photoshop to enhance celebrity photographs in fashion and gossip magazines. Every cover, says one media insider, has been altered to some degree, with some of these changes exposed in the "Photoshop Hall of Shame" and "Photoshop Disasters". So common is the practice that when an October 2008 Newsweek cover of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was not airbrushed, conservative anchors on Fox television complained that this amounted to liberal bias. (Fox knew about the political power of such changes because it had earlier manipulated the photos of two New York Times journalists it wanted to discredit).

Photo Tampering Throughout History\n\nPhotography lost its innocence many years ago. In as early as the 1860s, photographs were already being manipulated, only a few decades after Niepce created the first photograph in 1814. With the advent of high-resolution digital cameras, powerful personal computers and sophisticated photo-editing software, the manipulation of digital images is becoming more common. Here, I have collected some examples of tampering throughout history.\n\nTo help contend with the implications of this tampering, we have developed a series of tools for detecting traces of tampering in digital images (contact me at Ma'at Consulting for more information about our services).

Restoring Trust in Photojournalism: Black Star Rising Talks with Dr. Hany Farid By Scott BaradellscottbaradellcloseAuthor: Scott Baradell See Author's Posts (125) Recent Posts * Sometimes, Improvisation Is Not All It's Cracked Up to Be * Dealing with Fragile Artist Syndrome * Fake Chuck Westfall Gets Under Canon's Skin * Newspapers Are Running Out of Time to Solve the Problem of Content Theft * Stock Photography's Hidden Costs -- and How to Avoid Them Scott Baradell edits and contributes to Black Star Rising. A former newspaper journalist and executive for Belo Corp., Scott is an accomplished brand strategist who leads the Idea Grove agency. He has nearly two decades of experience working closely with professional photographers, both as a journalist and as a corporate photography buyer. in Photojournalism on August 6th, 2007 Photographers have been manipulating images ever since Abraham Lincoln's head was attached to John C. Calhoun's body in one of Lincoln's most famous portraits. But today, digital technology has made tampering easier and more pervasive than ever. Some believe the trend threatens the public's fundamental faith in the practice of photojournalism. In this context, Dr. Hany Farid should be a hero to photojournalists and lovers of photojournalism. Farid, who runs the Image Science Group at Dartmouth College, has emerged as a leading authority on digital forensics. His team has developed some of the most advanced software currently available to detect photo manipulation. While media organizations - increasingly rocked by photo-doctoring scandals - have not yet invested in Farid's technology, it seems only a matter of time before this occurs. Here's our Q&A with Farid:

Photographic retouching exposed April 29th, 2009 The issues surrounding photographic meaning, manipulation and Photoshop have been prominent recently (see my previous posts here and here, with some updates amongst the comments for each). Via Fred Ritchin's After Photography (see his 24 April post) comes news of a Swedish government project Girlpower dealing with sexism in advertising. One element is a magazine cover where, step-by-step, you can un-do the manipulation of the model to see how the glamorous cover was produced. You can go through each of the twelve changes that have been made, and at the end click on a red button to see the complete before and after images. We know it happens, but in this case, seeing is really believing.

New York Times Magazine Withdraws Altered Photo Essay UPDATE, 5:57 p.m. ET: The New York Times has published a new editors' note about the altered photo essay that was published in Sunday's Times Magazine. The newspaper says "most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show." The note does not address which photos were altered, or whether the photographer misrepresented them to the editors. PDN has tried to reach Edgar Martins, the photographer, but has not heard from him. Here's the Times' note: "A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled 'Ruins of the Second Gilded Age' showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, 'creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation.' "A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com."

It wasn't all that long ago when I was interviewed for Black Star's terrific new project on photojournalism ethics. The book could not come at a better time for an industry that is trying to redefine itself in the face of public cynicism and distrust. Here an excerpt from the text. Photography has always been about manipulation....Even the smile is a form of manipulation, because it may mask the true feelings of the subject."

Photographic truth and Photoshop April 17th, 2009 Photography's anxiety about truth, manipulation and reality has been on show recently. In different ways and from different contexts, people have been asking: "how much Photoshop is too much"? From the realm of fashion, French Elle is being celebrated for running a cover story in which the models photographs have not been 'Photoshopped' (thereby confirming, as I've noted previously, that digital manipulation is the norm in this visual domain). From the world of photojournalism, blogs like 1854, PDNPulse and the Online Photographer (with a follow-up here) have been buzzing with the story of the Danish photographer Klavs Bo Christensen who was excluded from that country's Picture of the Year competition for excessive colour manipulation of his Haiti story. Along with two others, Christensen was asked to submit his RAW files to the competition judges who felt that the colour in his photographs had been excessively saturated (their debate can be heard here), and removed his images from the competition as a result. Christensen was subsequently happy to have his files put on the web for comparison and discussion, thereby performing an important service to the photographic community.

Update | Thursday, 3:03 p.m. Edgar Martins, the photographer at the heart of the current controversy, has told Lens and at least one other blog, Jain, that he will be telling his side of the story soon. The text of his e-mail response to requests for interviews, identical to both blogs, is shown below in italics. Original post | There's probably no more troubling issue facing photojournalism than the digital manipulation of images that are supposed to faithfully represent what's in front of the camera. Digital technology permits so many interventions - some acutely obvious, others so subtle that only computers can detect them - that the line has blurred between manipulation and the kind of enhancement and editing that viewers customarily expect; like cropping, color correction, burning and dodging.

Danish Photoshop Debate Leads To Disqualification By Donald R. Winslow © 2009 News Photographer magazine COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (April 13, 2009) - Ethical questions surrounding photojournalists' use of Photoshop in image processing is not a controversy confined to the American market. Currently the embroilment rages in Denmark, where at least one photojournalist has been disqualified from a contest because it's been determined that his image manipulation went too far. Jens Tønnesen, the Webmaster for the Danish Union of Press Photographers, attended the National Press Photographers Association's NewsVideo Workshop in Norman, OK, last week where he told News Photographer magazine about the heated Photoshop debate that's going on back in Copenhagen. "There's a big discussion of Photoshop in Denmark these days because a photographer got disqualified from the Danish version of 'Pictures of the Year,'" Tønnesen told News Photographer magazine. Tønnesen had written about the squabble on the Pressefotografforbundet Web site. "Since the story has now spread to non-Danish blogs, I have decided to do an English translation so that Americans and others can read it," Tønnesen said.

"Increasingly music is finding its way into online multimedia journalism, and with good reason. A well chosen soundtrack can pull your viewers deep into your story, keep them hooked and make an emotional point. Music is, and let's be honest about this, a way of manipulating how your audience feel. There are those purists who are against that, who argue the story should be strong enough not to need to tell your viewer how to feel. Whichever camp you lie in, one thing is for sure: if you use music in any piece of online video journalism or digital story it must be legal. There is no excuse for getting your client or your newsroom shouldered with an expensive bill just because that bit of Arcade Fire fitted perfectly with the film. The good news is there are plenty of resources out there for free, or cheap, music. Most, but not all, operate under the Creative Commons Licence, which lets you use music on certain conditions."

Begun This Clone Tool Has Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop. If it is commercial and awful then please let us know! Anonymity can be arranged for the easily embarrassed/canned. Although I am hopeless at replying to email, be assured that each and every tip is followed up.

note this is in 2 parts 1: the recorder (JP) We begin this unit by exploring the idea of the photographer as a recorder of the world. This session investigates questions of photographic truth and objectivity; the nature of photographic evidence and the ethics of photographic manipulation. It examines photography's earliest history and how its properties and purposes have been imagined from the beginning. Required reading: Batchen, G. (1999) Burning With Desire: The Conception of Photography. Cambridge, Mass: MIT; chapter 1.

part 2 1: the recorder (JP) We begin this unit by exploring the idea of the photographer as a recorder of the world. This session investigates questions of photographic truth and objectivity; the nature of photographic evidence and the ethics of photographic manipulation. It examines photography's earliest history and how its properties and purposes have been imagined from the beginning. Required reading: Batchen, G. (1999) Burning With Desire: The Conception of Photography. Cambridge, Mass: MIT; chapter 1.

"The fascinating field of digital forensics couldn't be more relevant for a journalist, researcher or editor. Specialised analysts can test the authenticity of a photograph: how many times has it been saved? Have additions been made to the original, and if so, in which order? Are parts of the image generated by a computer? Professor Hany Farid, based at the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College in the US, explains that photo forensics refers to mathematical and computational techniques "that seek to determine if a photo has been altered from its time of recording, and how/where the photo was altered. "This field of study is highly technical, and while some simple analysis can be done without much technical training, most of the forensic techniques require a highly skilled practitioner.""

blogs that discuss, prove and disprove the increasing view that many news images are manipulated propaganda

Blackboard Collaborate software solutions offer a social, interactive learning experience with virtual classrooms, online conferencing, instant messaging and more collaboration tools.

The Admissibility of Digital Photographs in Criminal Cases By David P. Nagosky

As almost everyone knows by now, various major daily newspaper published, on July 10, a photograph of four Iranian missiles streaking heavenward; then Little Green Footballs (significantly, a blog and not a daily newspaper) provided evidence that the photograph had been faked. Later, many of those same papers published a Whitman's sampler of retractions and apologies. For me it raised a series of questions about images.[1] Do they provide illustration of a text or an idea of evidence of some underlying reality or both? And if they are evidence, don't we have to know that the evidence is reliable, that it can be trusted?

Vietnam War - "The Impact of Media" explores in detail the 'media distortions' due to television's misrepresentations during the Vietnam War. It rebuts the view promoted by PBS 's 13-part documentary series, "Vietnam: A Television History". The rebuttal also applies to "The Ten Thousand Day War" series. "The Impact of Media" is a must-see for historians and politicians alike. The late president Ronald Reagan lauded this rebuttal video when he watched it and said that it's "something all Americans should see". Made in 1984.

Given the emergence of the digital, few appear to be exploring whether more effective and expansive media strategies can now emerge. This site is a forum on possibility, launched in conjunction with the publication of Fred Ritchin's book After Photography in fall of 2008.