RE: [Leica] fired for photoshopping

["bdcolen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

Unfortunately, Tim, you're probably right.

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of Tim
Atherton
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 7:31 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] fired for photoshopping


In a way, what we are talking about is "Photoshop Creep"

It goes something like this:

In the "old" days it was just black and white - if you were lucky, and
the deadline wasn't too tight, you could play with the image a bit -
different contrast paper. darken the skies a bit , do a bit of dodging
here and there to make the picture feel a bit more like you thought it
should look.

Then came colour and you couldn't do much with it, but pretty soon,
along came Photoshop and desktop scanners.

The colour processing was often not that great, so now you could clean
up some of those horrid spots with the wonderful little "rubber stamp"
tool - boy was that cool.

And you could alter the colour and saturation a bit again. Make it look
a bit more how you think it should.

And Photoshop's so cool you can fool around with it - stick the editors
head on the body of that huge fat guy you did a story on who was so big
they had to take the wall of his house down to get him out. That one
sure looked funny stuck on the office wall.

But every now and then when no-one was looking, you got rid of that
telegraph pole that stuck out of the top of some kids head, or that
disembodied hand that somehow got in the edge of that great picture (hey
- - in the "old" days you would have just cropped it anyway right?)

And then they went all digital and it became even easier. No more
sitting there scanning - just do everything on the desktop. No-one even
knows that the original had those annoying power lines were there in the
sky or not - and you only do it every now and then, just to improve
things. Just like taking out the odd dust spot from the CCD.

The pay is really crap, the competitions tight and you probably had to
pay for most of this really expensive digital gear out of your own
pocket anyway. So, if you can just touch things up every now and then to
make the picture sing a bit more (as the "manipulated" picture in
question does, compared to the other to), then go ahead and do it - it's
not really that much different than Don McCullin printing his skies so
dark and ominously in every picture it looks like it's just about to
rain. Sure, most of the time, it's dust, and sharpening and colour and
contrast, maybe the odd wire or lamppost. But occasionally, just getting
rid of something a bit more obvious, or moving something just a bit
(after all, the photograph itself is artificial - an inhuman 1/250th of
a second - everyone was moving anyway) - if it somehow makes the picture
just that bit better.

NOW - if you don't think something like this is happening in almost
every newsroom in the country, you're fooling yourself. It's never
really talked about, but everyone knows it goes on, to some degree or
another.

tim




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