Interesting read on Photoshoping

John Young

Senior Member
Interesting article and this also effects all areas of photography were you get a bride asking "Will you please make me slimmer with photoshop" people just assume now that you will be photo shopping their photos to death
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Interesting idea - should a Photojournalist be limited to what they can do in post processing with regard to edits? Provided that they do not alter the content of the image (merging multiple images or subtracting elements out of the scene) my take is that they should be able to do anything and everything that they would have been able to do back when creating a print in a darkroom. Burn edges? Of course. Add a vignette? Absolutely. Dodge and burn? Without a doubt. I believe the only restriction for a "news photo" contest should be that the contest photo precisely match what originally appeared in the press - whether it be a website, newspaper or magazine.
 

DTigga

New member
Couldn't agree more.

If a competition didn't want photoshop'd images then they should stipulate that in the terms of entry. Editing of photos has been around as long as photography has. If your edits enhance the message you are trying to convey when how can that be wrong?

To say that journalistic photography is not an artistic expression but rather an acurate account of what happened is just narrow minded. If a photographer captures an image, then enhances it so that the focus/message of the image is more prominent then I believe they have done their job right.
 

TedG954

Senior Member
I wish I could command Photo Shop like those artists. To me, a photo should be treated like a painting. Unique. Different. Photo Shop and the other post processing programs give you the ability to make a photo your own signature. Post processing is my friend.
 

stmv

Senior Member
responses well stated, touchup/darkroom edits as old as photography, so, no such thing as a raw image. Photojournalism is to elicit an emotional response from the reader, without changing the content with false intent. Some of the most famous news photos of the past were manipulated quite a bit. so the false intent becomes the debate.

It would be very interesting for all contest to include the source,, of course bracketed HDR shots get interesting..

it really is an IMAGE award,, with a photojournalist intent of eliciting an emotional response from the reader linking to a story. How well the image conveys the story, and builds up the story is the consideration.
 

Brusader

Senior Member
The camera doesn't see or capture a scene as our eyes perceive it, so there will always be a need to 'tweak' a photo.

The recommendation by myself and many other photographers to cameras set to RAW proves this point, as we know we can adjust the image to be more like what we want.

The question is: How much can you edit a photograph so it stops being a photograph?
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
The question is: How much can you edit a photograph so it stops being a photograph?

Depends on the purpose/intent of the person doing the manipulation and your definition of photograph. In its purest sense I would say that the minute you introduce anything that wasn't captured by the camera, or alter the nature of the light that was (i.e. color shift, but not necessarily HDR) then it is no longer a photograph in that purest sense. What it becomes is a function of the intent. It is no longer a photograph from a journalistic perspective, but it certainly is from an artistic perspective. A photograph as an artistic work allows for a nearly infinite set of manipulations while retaining the definition of a "photograph", or at least a "photographic work".
 
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