[normhead]

True. The reason I think sholtzma was okay in the way he cropped his pic was because he was trying to make people think about the greater implications it implied. He wasn't shooting a strict journalism pic. Or at least I don't think he was. But even if he was taking a journalistic approach, I think he'd still be okay because he hadn't altered the basic scene. He just chose a framing that caused the photo to resonate more loudly. I recently watched the movie, "Nightcrawler" with Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal plays a news videographer who covers events that happen in the dead of night. His character did all sorts of unethical stuff, but there was one scene were he had gotten inside a house where a shooting had occured and was documenting it. He sees there are bullet holes in the refrigerator and family pics stuck on the fridge with magnets. He shoots the fridge, then goes over and moves one of the family pics up next to a bullet hole to make more dramatic footage. I turned to my wife and said, "That stuff will get you fired. It's considered staging." It was moving the pic where he screwed up. If the bullet hole and picture had happened to already been next to each other and Jake framed his shot to make a larger statement about the family and the shooting...well, that's just called having a good eye.

That's an interesting analogy. But what about the alternate reality... if he saw the picture of the family and the bullet holes at almost the same time. That was his reality, Now he alters the frame by moving the picture next to the bullet hole, so his audience will experience the scene, the way he did. Immediately juxtaposing the bullet holes with the family picture and ignoring much of the rest of the scene. So, what is more important? A frozen second in time lacking perceptual context, or a more accurate portrayal of any human's interaction with the scene?

I would argue that the frozen moment would be more deceptive than the moved picture next to the bullet holes, which makes it possible to focus on the emotional content of the scene and it's meaning, rather than an out of context fleeting image.

I am continually appalled by the number of people who use cameras, who don't understand, every image is a manipulation of contextual reality. You cannot be honest with a camera, you can focus on a very small segment of a given moment, and isolate it from it's emotional and conceptual context, but that is not portraying reality. Every image has to be examined for it's truthfulness, and non-photoshopped photos can be just as manipulative as straight off the camera images, because they edit perceptual context.

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Last edited by normhead; 08-06-2015 at 10:09 AM.

[realitarian]

You cannot be honest with a camera, you can focus on a very small segment of a given moment, and isolate it from it's emotional and conceptual context, but that is not portraying reality.

Like cropping the picture of a white person's hand on a black person's head? If the intention there was to portray reality, that would have been unethical. If the intention was purely artistic interpretation of a social situation, it needed to be presented as such and hopefully with permissions from the subjects.

[mcgregni]

So cropping could be an issue .... Why not then zooming .... ?

[BrianR]

So cropping could be an issue .... Why not then zooming .... ?

No different. It's not the specific tool that really matters here but how it's used. We always crop stuff out by our framing or zooming, there's always going to be some lie (or version of the truth) chosen by the photographer. If you're deliberately trying to mislead people about events that's deceitful (imo). Context, as mentioned a few times, is important.


edit- I'd also like to point out that only one person in this thread has seen the picture(s) that has caused this "cropping" discussion. I can pretty much guarantee that my mental image of it is different than everyone else's. Whether a crop or framing is deliberately misleading is of course very dependent on the specific circumstances.

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Last edited by BrianR; 08-06-2015 at 11:27 AM.

[normhead]

So cropping could be an issue .... Why not then zooming .... ?

Exactly, every lens crops reality... just choosing where to point your camera you have already edited out huge amounts of the content available to you.

There was white hands all over my little dark body changing my diaper and everything else when I was growing up, and it was completely normal. This race thing you are imagining exists only in your own minds.

Let me put this as gently as possible.

Say you take a picture of a father and his young daughter walking down the beach holding hands.
Someone might say the photo might depict someone who was a child molester abducting a child.
But the only person likely to think that would be a child molester. The rest of us would see a father walking his daughter on the beach.

This is the same,the only person who could possibly object to such a photograph as described above would be someone who is trying to give some importance to the race of the subjects... and that would be a racist. To anyone but a racist, it would just be a picture of a man with his hands on a child's head. Which is what I would see.

What your teacher /friend taught you was to view the world from a race based perspective. Where I come from, that's just wrong. People are judged by their character, not by their color. That he meant well is not the issue.

[TaoMaas]

...what about the alternate reality... if he saw the picture of the family and the bullet holes at almost the same time. That was his reality, Now he alters the frame by moving the picture next to the bullet hole, so his audience will experience the scene, the way he did.

Nope...can't do it. It's like golf. You've gotta play the ball where it lies. lol "Staging" is a huge no-no in photojournalism. The tv station where I used to work fired a videographer years ago for moving a singed teddy bear into the foreground of his shot of a house fire where some kids had died.

[realitarian]

I see your point normhead. It makes sense to me and I am sure to others.

Let's think about the specific situation though: the same good vibe could have been created without the cropping. So what was the point of cropping and taking out the entire context? What was the intention in going that extra distance? Only the artist knows, at this point.

More generally, a camera let's you present a perception of reality. It also let's you manipulate reality to misrepresent what you know is (your perception) of reality. Does your perception coincide with what you think a reasonable observer would interpret it is? If no, then you are either being unethical or doing something artistic deliberately. Only the photographer knows which one.

[normhead]

Ya, well, maybe photojournalism is going down the tube because it deserves to. The goal of a story teller is to tell a story. You're making these guys sound like they are totally incapable of seeing how badly they warp reality in many situations. They believe in some kind of truth that doesn't exist. But then you have to ask. How is sending a reporter to a murder scene not distorting reality? The reporters should just wander around shooting what they see every day. How many murder scenes is that likely to involve? These guys are already dstorting reality just by selecting what they publish. There is no "truth seeking" going on there. Their standards are bogus attempts to try and lend some kind of credibility to a completely selective process, that in fact focuses on what sells papers and gets people to tune into the news. Not on what reality is like. So how is focussing on what makes them money in any way better than moving a Teddy bear at crime scene? That's just sick. Those people are truly perverted.

Where you go to shoot, and how you frame your images is selective. Re-arranging a few items to emphasize a point, that's just good photography. That's when a picture helps you tell the story. And isn't that what photojournalists should do? Take pictures that help them tell the story? What is important?

[jamarley]

Where you go to shoot, and how you frame your images is selective.

Absolutely true, as is which lens you choose to shoot the scene with. If i use an ultra wide I'm including elements that might not be in the picture at all with a telephoto lens. And if I use a fisheye the scene is distorted in the picture while I didn't do a thing except chose the lens. Perhaps all photography is art and we need a whole lot more sub categories of art to draw the lines.

[realitarian]

Hmmm...is it art or is it a limitation you need to work around to present what you think is reality? I mean, consider non-photo journalism. Let's say you only have 500 words for your piece. Would you do your best to edit and be concise and precise, or do you say I will present a specific section of 500 words from my 2000 words piece, even if it massively misrepresents the situation?

Edit: the above is assuming you WANT to present reality. If you want to present an artistic perspective that is an entirely different situation. Again, it boils down to intention and presentation of context.

[jamarley]

Hmmm...is it art or is it a limitation you need to work around to present what you think is reality? I mean, consider non-photo journalism. Let's say you only have 500 words for your piece. Would you do your best to edit and be concise and precise, or do you say I will present a specific section of 500 words from my 2000 words piece, even if it massively misrepresents the situation?

Edit: the above is assuming you WANT to present reality. If you want to present an artistic perspective that is an entirely different situation. Again, it boils down to intention and presentation of context.

I stand (sit, in reality) corrected and admonished. How about an MPAA-type scale for rating the veracity of pictures? G for Generally just like what I saw, PG for Partly Got it as I saw it, etc.

[mcgregni]

I suppose I could add to my question (about zooming) .... Why not lens changing or selecting? Good points above Norm .... There are many ways we can technically apply our own personal "crop" of the world.



I agree though, for factual journalism, that where a wider visual context is needed in order to understand the truth of an image, then that should be included visually in the image content.

[normhead]

I stand (sit, in reality) corrected and admonished. How about an MPAA-type scale for rating the veracity of pictures? G for Generally just like what I saw, PG for Partly Got it as I saw it, etc.

Cool , as long as you realize that "just like what I saw" the important part is the "i". Everyone see a little bit different, sometimes really different and through different filters. What I saw is not even partially objective. What you saw, is more about "you" than "What you saw." Given the way our mind is conditioned to look for patterns and shapes, emphasizing some things, de-emphasizing others, "what you saw" is not even what you saw. You saw way more than that and any decent hypnotist can prove that.

The blind men and the elephant comes to mind.

[jamarley]

Cool , as long as you realize that "just like what I saw" the important part is the "i". Everyone see a little bit different, sometimes really different and through different filters. What I saw is not even partially objective. What you saw, is more about "you" than "What you saw." Given the way our mind is conditioned to look for patterns and shapes, emphasizing some things, de-emphasizing others, "what you saw" is not even what you saw. You saw way more than that and any decent hypnotist can prove that.

The blind men and the elephant comes to mind.

Yes, oh yes. The rating scale would be totally self-regulated, but in an informative way. Sort of like self-help.

[Winder]

Journalism's primary ethic is "never purposely mislead".

Journalism in that regard is dead. Modern journalism is about pushing an agenda.