This was brought up last year during the awards season, but still is a good example of how something very small and trivial that is removed from an image causes concern.
What's interesting about this debate is that the extreme toning wasn't questioned. Although the toning didn't remove or add any content from the image, it's still heavy handed. And the crop is just lazy.
Be sure to read the discussions on the link page and add your comments for this posting for the rest of the class to read.
World Press Image Discussion
I have to agree with you Jerome. The extreme post processing on the image is more of a concern to me. And I honestly don't think it's that great of an image anyway. It's somewhat interesting, but that's about it, and I think the heavy toning might be part of why it looks interesting, because it's a pretty dull photo the way it looks out of the camera.
ReplyDeleteI think the photographer should have zoomed in or moved the camera in close on the hands to get that shot. That amount of cropping is pretty insane.
I guess all in all, I agree that the removal of the foot is unethical enough to disqualify the photo. But the real lesson I take away from this is to take multiple shots from different perspectives, because the photographer could have easily moved around a bit to get the same shot without the foot in the frame.
Well... I agree with Jerome and Mike. That leaves me with little to say here. But on a related topic, I have watched Jerome do some dodging and burning on some photos which was very, very minimal. Much less than Phil would have had us do. But I still have no intuitive feel for the too much/too little line and thus avoid it all together.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I don't like about that photo from a photojournalism standpoint, is that it started out as such a boring photo that the photographer really relied on heavy post processing to make it dramatic and interesting. The photo itself just wasn't very good. After the crop and the toning, I feel like the photo had a completely new meaning and feel to it that doesn't seem like an accurate representation of what was going on in the picture.
ReplyDeletePer the contest rules, the picture should most definitely had been disqualified.
ReplyDeleteAs to the toning adding or removing, I will have to respectfully disagree with Jerome in that the toning removed the person behind the main subject. Furthermore, it affected the order in which things are viewed by the observer. Had the photographer not darken the jeans of the person behind the "boxer hand" my eye would have been drawn first to the light jeans then the hand. If the Photographer had darken the foot, would he had been disqualified? No!
If one is to go with the pj tenet that a picture is a graphic unbiased representation of a moment in time, then the order in which things are viewed in a pictured should be left to the reader. Also, most people are not color blind and if they are they can see more colors beside black and white.
In the name of accountability, I think the WWP should had acknowledge some form of "mea culpa" for their role in accepting the picture. The fact that they requested the original RAW picture after awarding a prize is some form of indication that something is wrong. There are different levels of responsibility that need acknowledgement. Could the photographer done better? You can always improve on something than has been done in the past. Did he find a picture within a picture? Surely he did. Is this a PJ picture? NO, this picture is a good exercise in artistic editing.
Interesting response Marily and very thorough. Upon reading your comment, I had to go back and look at the image again. The heavy vignette definitely removed information, including the person behind the arm as well as the section of red sweater in the bottom right corner.
ReplyDeleteA big argument in the PJ community of shooters that don't participate in contests is that most of the images that are selected for awards have very heavy, even unethical toning done. It's frustrating when you follow the rules and do your best to get solid, story-telling imaging only to see a photo of equal caliber, or sometimes less, selected due to "dramatic" toning.
And also, keep in mind that the image we are talking about was part of a feature story on street fighting. There were some decent photos in there that were deserving of recognition. Too bad his unethical choices ruined it.
I agree with everyone's comments. I think that as a photojournalist, Stepan should have edited in-camera, and made sure that everything in the frame had a purpose. Mike, I'm with you in that he could've easily adjusted the camera position to remove the foot from the frame. Also, if the shot he wanted was a close-up of the hands, he should've thought about it before shooting rather than cropping such a large amount of information out of the photo he ended up with. Although it seems trivial to be disqualified for removing such a small component from the photo, I think it was more that he provided viewers with a different feeling about the actual scene/event that was originally photographed. That being said, I think the disqualification was justified.
ReplyDelete