AP Confirms Photographer Manipulated His Own Shadow | Hacker News Reader

AP Confirms Photographer Manipulated His Own Shadow

ap.org

13 pointsbproper18 comments

The most important product of AP (and most serious news organizations) is credibility. Something like this is a cancer to their brand that they have to cut out in the most absolute terms possible. I don't think there was any malice by the photographer but anyone working for a large news organization should be aware how sensitive they are to this kind of thing - if a reporter made up a source or quotation, I'd expect a similar response.

My thoughts exactly. The photographer probably thought he was doing this innocently, but even a small manipulation like this can seriously change what a picture means. There's a really good example of this somewhere online showing how the meaning of a photo can be changed by cropping the right and left sides of a picture involving a soldier. Sadly, I can't seem to find it. So, here's a couple of other examples:

http://familybible.org/israel/conflict/PeacefulTerrorists.ht...

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photogra...

AP is absolutely correct to take such draconian measures - they need to be credible.

EDIT: Found it! See here: http://www.rhetorik.ch/Bildmanipulation/soldat.jpg

The photographer was a freelancer, so it's possible that he wasn't familiar with the AP's guidelines.

That said, not manipulating images is the first thing that gets drilled into you as a photojournalist (either in school, or when you start doing assignments), so it's pretty unusual for someone to not realize the importance.

A lot of photo agencies require submission of the RAW files specifically to combat this sort of thing.

A gallery w/ the offending image: http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/sport/local-football-in-a...

is it 2? if so, it's strangely crude.

Here says that it is the #2 photo. And they have a version with less cropping, where it is possible to see the cloned dust.

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/138728/ap-drops...

Why wouldn't removing your own shadow from the shot fall under the stated provision that "minor adjustments in Photoshop are acceptable?" The AP's policy clearly states that adjustments are allowed as long as they attempt to "restore the authentic nature of the photograph". Removing your shadow from an unimportant area of the picture seems to fall under that caveat.

I'm not saying the AP are wrong here, but the photographer's actions seem consistent with stated policy, and as such banning him for life seems like quite an overreaction. Can anyone who knows more about photography explain why this isn't the case?

Well, read on in that provision:

"These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, and normal toning and color adjustments that should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction (analogous to the burning and dodging previously used in darkroom processing of images) and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph. Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of ³red eye² from photographs is not permissible."

It's pretty clear that he can't modify the background of the image, or really do anything he couldn't do in a darkroom.

It's just not clear to someone with no photographic knowledge. Can't you do that sort of blurring or lightening of a shadow chemically, albeit with a steady hand?

Perhaps the principle is simply that the AP doesn't want to expose itself to a slippery slope by allowing an innocuous violation of the policy to go unpunished. Again, I'm not saying they're wrong for doing so - I just don't know enough about photography to say with certainty "yes, this guy f'ed up and should never work again."

You could lighten it in the darkroom, which sounds like AP would allow, but not remove it completely.

you can try to remove the shadow in the darkroom by "dodging" (blocking light from the projector so that the negative doesn't shine so brightly on the area that will be dark in the final print). but it's very hard to do well for something with a well-defined outline and even if you could match the outline exactly (perhaps by printing a mask) it would look odd because the detail would be missing in that area. that's why something like photoshop doesn't attempt to correct the brightness, but instead "patches over" with a copy of similar texture from elsewhere in the image.

but this is all going off on a tangent. it's not really "science" or even "practice" that's important here, but a culture of trust. and so what the newspapers have done is argue along the lines of "people used to trust film photos, so we will freeze things there and allow only what was possible then[1]". so the limits are really quite arbitrary (but not unreasonable).

[1] without cutting up and pasting over and ...

If removing "red eye" isn't permissible, removing a whole shadow is definitely now.

I think it's harsh that they banned him for life, but there have been some bad incidents lately and I'm sure they are setting an example.

On one hand, I'm happy they are serious about journalism and integrity. But on the other, I think it's an unusually harsh punishment.

The absurd thing is that as worded it appears cameras that remove red eye automatically might technically violate their policy.

I'm not sure many professional photographers are using cameras that do that.

Not only that, but it then becomes a 'slippery slope', where do you draw the line at what manipulation is possible. Here they've draw a pretty clear line that the 'content' of the image cannot be changed but that coloring and associated items can be tweaked to more accurately represent the scene. [Lets avoid picking apart the generalization I made above, yes color is 'content' but I think the meaning is fairly clear here]

Removing the photographer's shadow is essentially the same as removing a more directly visible subject from the photo.

Removing your shadow from a photograph is most likely an aesthetic decision, which is an area of reportage photography that you dare not tread. Photojournalsim has enough to answer for regarding selective composition/cropping (for example framing a shot of a group of people where it appears that they are alone, whereas if you had a wider crop you'd see more people).

Using the clone tool at all is pretty much a red flag.

Banning for life might seem harsh, but if you're the AP, you pretty much can't trust any further images that you get from this Photographer, so it's really the only option for them.

The choice of what to, and what not to photograph, what to include inside the frame and what to leave out, can do more to change a photo's interpretation than this edit. This policy does more to give the appearance of credibility than it does to actually ensure credibility.

With that said, I understand why the AP did it.

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