The Careful Use Of Photo Editing In The World Of Journalism

Years ago, photo editing was a laborious and tedious process. If you wanted to change more than the bare basics, such as lighting or darkening a photo, you could figure on many hours of work ahead of you.

A simple task we now take for granted, like taking out a feature from the photo, meant creating a whole new picture. You would then have to replace the missing element with other bits. For example, if you had a picture of a group that included Stalin and you wanted to paint out one of his associates, you were probably looking at days of work.

Nowadays that is no longer the case. With Paint, and Photoshop, and similar programs, you can change elements of your photos quickly and easily.

It’s also now much easier to change the picture entirely. This can be very unfortunate. You can now take an image and, without a lot of difficulty, take out elements or add elements that were not there when the photo was taken.

This brings up a sticky point, where photojournalism is concerned. Journalists, including photojournalists, are supposed to accurately present what happened. There is a difference between correcting the color cast of a picture, and changing a dull sky to a dark and stunning sunset.

Other small changes are tantamount to telling lies to the viewer. For instance, if you add smoke to a scene, or add more people to make a crowd seem larger, this isn’t making it more dramatic or enhancing its representativeness. You are fictionalizing the image and it is inappropriate.

Some would argue that there is a fine line between changing for editorial reasons and going too far. The two may be close at times but the bottom line is, the picture’s content must not have been changed. If there has been anything added to or taken from the photo in a way that changes the meaning of the image, the photographer has gone too far.

Remember this when you edit your own photos. It’s one thing if the photo is meant to be “art.” Then, the photographer can do whatever, it isn’t supposed to be strictly representative. News photography, while it can be artful, is not art and a photojournalist is a journalist and not an artist.

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