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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).

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.

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."

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.

For Greater Image Credibility In my After Photography book I outline a number of ways to employ the digital image differently, including ways to be more explicit as to the origins and possible meanings of the image. Given the never-ending discussions about digital retouching and a growing disbelief as to the authenticity of the contemporary photograph, I will repeat two of them here: