Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/29

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Cropping dilema
From: Eric Welch <eric@jphotog.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 18:47:00 -0700

You are right to refer to news photos in this issue. If it's a news 
photo, then no, it is NEVER ethical to do such a thing. Period.

But if you're not a news photographer, and you are just doing this for 
your own edification, then I don't see much problem with it. It's how 
you represent the photo to people that counts. If I were doing a book, 
and I wanted to add such a photo, I would make a note that I had added 
a bit of "black" in a corner to make it fit the frame. But maybe some 
other crop would be better.

Let's see the photo some time and then we can better judge what you are 
planning.

In the end, the old saw applies: "The camera never lies. But 
photographers do." :-) That applies to news photographers. For everyone 
else, they have to decide what they are doing with their photo and be 
happy with their decision.

On Tuesday, July 29, 2003, at 12:02  PM, feli2@earthlink.net wrote:

> Is it ethical to fill these triangles in with some night sky and 
> pavement? Is that the same as doing some burning in the darkroom? Is 
> it the same as restoring a scratch on a negative? Filling in the 
> corners will not change the content, action, circumstances or meaning 
> of the photo. It's more of a technical fix.I know that news photos are 
> constantly cropped. Sometimes for the worse, since a crop can change 
> the context under which something took place. But that would not be 
> the case with these fixes. Still I'm very torn if this is an ethical 
> thing to do.
- --
Eric

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by 
little statesmen, philosophers, and divines. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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