[Leica] NPR comments on photography

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

You mean to tell me all these days of fuss and letter writing and a guy
fired because he "cropped out" a pair of legs with PhotoShop that had
absolutely no relevance to the scene?

That's it? Spotted out a pair of unknown legs!!! What if he just cropped the
shot tighter and nobody would've known. My heavens people, please let us not
be of the bird brained type morons who created all this fuss!

I mean the feet have no relevance. The only real problem here was the photog
wasn't smart enough to crop hard on the right side of the frame! That's all
he had to do! And it wouldn't have mattered if a 1000 other newspapers used
it with the legs or not!

This is what happens when photographer's fall completely into the bosom of
mother "Photoshop!" They stop thinking like wet room photographers and
cropping in the enlarging and become wonder whiz kids of the re-touching
tool! I'd bet there's a lot more to this story than what we are seeing. 

NOW!!............ the BASKETBALL insertion!!!!!!!!!

That's just plain ordinary CHEATING!!! Out and out! And absolutely no kiss
ass reason he or the thousands of others who do this kind of insertion crap
every day shouldn't be fired!

No he didn't change the re-action of the players and their efforts. And
putting the ball in didn't, nor did it make any difference to their face and
hand actions. Or the score.

However what he did was, he be-littled and made potential looking cheats out
of every one of us working professional photojournalists! Once this kind of
crap is out, then in the eyes of lay people we are cheaters! That means
every photograph where due to our skill, experience or just plain good old
fashion luck, we have the projectile in the picture it's assumed by the
people, we put it there with PhotoShop! Unfortunately! :-( We are tarred,
feathered and guilty of cheating because of him.

This kind of insertion if caught, the shooter is out the door with the
hardest kick in the ass and a damn good smack across the side of his or her
head! Gone finito and it doesn't matter how many award winning photos taken
in the past!

Don't even think about coming back to defend the guy and his crap, simply
because this "photo over work" isn't any different than cheating at
anything! Quite frankly the SOB is a liar!!!!!

And in turn, makes all of us look like liars and cheats!! Did anyone die
because of this? No. But my honesty and integrity as a long time hard
working photojournalist to bring truth with my cameras and pictures has been
tarnished! 

And that my friends is what's damaged due to this damn fool! My honour and
that of thousands of others like me who use our cameras with honesty in
bringing truth to our viewers!

ted