NATIONAL JOURNAL: Real Or Fake? (04/10/2006)

Thanks to digital technology, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most photographed in history. Photographers with digital cameras have provided, almost instantaneously, an enormous flood of accurate, dramatic, and even shocking images to people around the world. But the daily downloads of news photos include some that are staged, fake, or so lacking in context as to be meaningless, despite the Western media’s best efforts to separate the factual from the fictional.

Being someone who manipulates images for a living, I’ve wondered how much of a problem this sort of thing was. I know I look at images a lot different than the average person. When I look at an image in a magazine, TV or online I look to see how it’s been changed. I look to see how it was made. Call me a cynic, but it’s much easier to get the effect you want in PhotoShop rather than take the picture right to begin with. Apparently some others have had the same thought. Unfortunately some of them have been behind the camera it seems.

Poynter Online – L.A. Times Photographer Fired Over Altered Image

“Being in the desert away from your readers does not mean you have free license to deceive them,” agrees Maria Mann, former AFP, North American Photo Director and now the principal of The Creative Eye Consulting.

“The Los Angeles Times acted swiftly and decisively in dealing with a photographer who felt that altering the truth was a viable option,” she says.

Honesty and integrity are two of the biggest things a photographer can bring to their job. Even when not manipulating the photos digitally they can strongly influence their images. What you shoot, what don’t you shoot, how did you frame the image. In front of a monitor or behind a camera, these things all effect how the images are perceived. While a picture is worth a thousand words, a dishonest photograph is worth considerably less.

BLACKFIVE and Michelle Malkin are all over these stories today.