Photographers Are on Mission to Fix Wikipedia's Famously Bad Celebrity Portraits | Hacker News Reader

Photographers Are on Mission to Fix Wikipedia's Famously Bad Celebrity Portraits

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Realistic (read candid/unplanned) photographs are best. I would hate to see Wiki portraits replaced with the front covers of Time and Vogue.

Concur. Photographers are universally unwilling to not use heavy post-processing.

Very serious hobby photographer here. Not all of us follow this tedious tendency. Of course it depends on the photographic niche but even in mine, which is a mix of social, street and fine art/abstract photography, I avoid as much as possible anything except a bit of cropping and minor contrast adjustments with the most basic digital tools. Specifically, I detest massive post processing of photos, since it seems dishonest and a cheap way to cover for a lack of willingness to learn composing better shots.

And don't even get me started on the utter dreck of so-called photographers using AI tools like Adobe's Firefly crap (good tools, but crap in the context of this specific rant) to "seamlessly and realistically" move or erase objects in photos. If you're going that far with manipulating your photos, why bother taking them in the first place?

Agreed, this move seems like wasted effort at best.

Definitely not as a general rule. Many of the Wikipedia photos in question are celebrities mid-sentence, speaking at some fan convention, taken from a bad angle and digitally zoomed in.

There's a middle ground between that and a professional set card.

I've always wondered: Do celebrities and public figures (or at least their agents) not have any intrinsic motivation to maybe provide better photos themselves?

Are they allowed to, or would Wikipedia lawyers strike it for "original research" or something? From what I've seen and heard they don't even allow people to correct their own birth date unless they get some third party newspaper to print it first.

Yes, and they even let you email them in to make it easier.

They wouldn't even have to touch Wikipedia. Just upload a permissively licensed photo to Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons inclusion policy literally states:

> Is it likely to be useful to a Wikimedia Foundation project? For example, can you point to a Wikipedia article that would benefit from this file's inclusion?

So just slap it on there, and let the Wikipedians handle it from there.

The "original research" rule only applies to facts. Take a look at a few photos on wikipedia and you'll find many (most?) of them are uploaded there by the creator, not copied from another publication.

Photographs and other original media are an exemption to the original research policy because otherwise it'd be impossible to get images in articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...

> Because of copyright laws in several countries, there may be relatively few images available for use on Wikipedia. Editors are therefore encouraged to upload their own images, releasing them under appropriate Creative Commons licenses or other free licenses. Original images created by a Wikimedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments, the core reason behind the "No original research" policy.

The celebrity quoted in the article seemed eager to have his picture taken for the express purpose of getting it on Wikipedia, so you'd think that some of their agents would have gotten the message by now.

Pay a photographer, release the photo under some CC licence, slap it on Wikimedia Commons, and leave a message on the talk-page (“Hey, this recent photo looks better, can we use that?”), and done.

Weird how that doesn't seem to happen that often, despite many celebrities apparently really wanting it.

> Pay a photographer, release the photo under some CC licence

The person who buys a photographer's work doesn't get to change the license. Unless you pay a photographer a great deal of money to transfer the rights, the license is what the photographer (or photo agency) says it is.

So you choose a different photographer which _does_ offer the license you want?

Unless there is a photographers' union that forces specific licenses, surely there will some some photographers out there who would be OK with CC license?

Yeah, if you go far enough down the list you'll eventually find one. Will the photographer be any better than some rando Wikipedian? Hard to say.

Yeah, you can find one. That’s not what the OP suggested (or at least didn’t explain it well).

Rights and licensing in photography is just as complicated as other mediums. Up to primates owning selfies they took with somebody else’s camera.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disp...

An agent acting for a celebrity would know exactly how to handle this, including paying the photographer a fair price for their work and the full rights, and handling all the paper work. That's their job.

It's not hard either. I mean, you could just step into a high street photo shop and have your portrait taken professionally, keep all the usage rights to it for a small amount of money, and end up with a photo already better than most of those Wikipedia examples from the article. But professional photographers usually are willing to negotiate this upfront as well, and why not? The fee rises, but not beyond what most celebrities can afford to pay for this. More relevantly though, an agent won't let the copyright sit with the photographer by default if they need that photo for all sorts of stuff themself, including commercial use.

Besides, larger agencies are likely to have photographers on staff who do this.

"just".

That's it people, rando HN commenter solved the problem. No need to do anything special.

As the sibling said, that's not generally how photography licensing works (the photographer usually retains the rights to the photo and licenses it for specific use).

But, that also wouldn't stop a celebrity (or their agent) from taking a nice selfie, or picking a family candid, or whatever other photo looks better than whatever is posted currently. Or just paying a slightly larger sum to the photographer to transfer rights or release under CC or whatever.

I'm surprised it isn't a priority - I assume most celebs have a media team already (at least celebs I'm likely to have heard of) but some still have really awful Wiki portraits.

> As the sibling said, that's not generally how photography licensing works (the photographer usually retains the rights to the photo and licenses it for specific use).

Obviously they would have to pay the photographer for the photo as well as the usage rights. Clever photographers would know about this, and simply offer to release the photo under CC-BY. With a big enough celebrity that attribution is not bad too have plastered all over the internet either (and they still got paid for the work).

It’s way more impactful to manage the words on the page, since those are a source for other Internet actors like search engines and AI. It’s also way easier to hide the fingerprints of text changes, so there are PR agencies that specialize in that.

Wikipedia is not a source for images, though, it’s a client. And it’s harder to hide fingerprints since you have to disclose ownership of the copyright in order to issue Wikipedia a license to use the image.

The photographer owns the copyright, and would want to be paid to release the rights in a wikipedia-apropriate way.

Most of the amateur celebrity photography on wikipedia are happy to donate their images to the cause.

As much fun as it is to idolize and eleveate celebrities, they are just employees in another business, they'd have to arrange some way for a photographer (or themselves) to take a better picture and then CC license it.

> they'd have to arrange some way for a photographer (or themselves) to take a better picture and then CC license it.

That sounds like something a publicist could easily do if it were a priority. Actors and publicists have no trouble managing their IMDB pages and IMDB even charges for the ability to contribute.

Yes, but doesn't that still seem like a no-brainer from a marketing/public relations perspective?

You say this as if it would be impossible for a celeb to find a photog that would be willing to release said copyright. Most photogs just want to be paid for their service. They understand what taking a portrait for said purpose of releasing rights to a CC license would mean. If they, for whatever reason, decide no, then the celeb can move to the next photog on the list that is a mile and a half long, and that's just the photogs within a 50 mile radius of wherever they are currently standing

It's a work for hire that creators of all sorts do all the time. Contracts may well be involved but most creators are happy to take the money and mostly release the rights for the work they did in exchange for a paycheck--as are most people on this board.

I took portraits for a cousin's kiddo and gave them the proper files to have prints made. I forget exactly what store they went to have them made (CVS/Walgreens/WallyWorld), but were at first refused prints because they "didn't own the copyright" with they being my cousin. They were told they would need a signed release to make the prints. Of course I had no issue doing this, but it was the first time I had ever heard of some one being refused like that. Now, I just provide said letter with the files.

Historically, at least wedding and portrait photographers--perhaps in particular--made a lot of their money from selling print packages while retaining the rights to the original photographs.

I'm aware of that. I was more surprised the first time it happened to me as a bit of imposter syndrome where someone took my image as professional. I've never claimed to be one. I just play one on TV

Well then why wouldn’t the celebrities just do that?

Pay someone to do a good photo and then pay them to license it with a Creative Commons license for Wikipedia use. Or just pay them to make it public domain.

This is assuming the celebrities care about their Wikipedia pages.

> they'd have to arrange some way for a photographer (or themselves) to take a better picture and then CC license it.

Passport photo studio will do it for $20. Depending on the celeb they might even do it free. /s

Do you think there's not one single photographer on the continent willing to take a headshot for a one-time payment? Or that no celebrity has even one PR person who can set up a basic shoot?

This is not a real problem in the real world. You can simply pay someone for the license to a photo. You can simply have a photo done in-house so you own the copyright. There are countless alternatives here

I love that this is a project. Heck, I’d sign up myself for the Boston/New England beat if I had more confidence in my portraiture skills. Never really considered the only thing holding back better portraits on Wikipedia was the need for a photographer willing to sacrifice the revenue on one shot for a greater cause.

"greater cause" when referring to better pictures of rich, famous celebrities??

Greater cause in the general sense of contributing to the world's largest repository of free information, and waiving rights to profit off of your work so others can benefit from it.

And yes, frustratingly this includes celebrities. These are people of outsized impact and/or import in society, and they need to be identifiable so that they can be held accountable.

I agree with your assessment of greater cause and free information, but in this case, the issue appears that the photos are not the most flattering. Look at the examples at the top of the article. Leo is simply looking down and not at the camera. I guess you could argue the Scott Baio is a picture that should be upgraded, but as mentioned in thread, his PR people could easily correct that.

Anybody else remember “celebrities” going legal against IMDB for listing their year of birth? Just remember this is a vanity project, not a drive to enhance documentation accuracy.

Just use ai.

https://www.wikiportraits.org/

Amazing that anyone is willing to make an effort and subscribe to some random media portal with 80% content generated by chat GPT and alikes, just to read an article about replacing photo of the man, whose girlfriend has the same age since 30 years, with a different photo of the same guy.

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