Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/04/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]That was my reaction, too, Ted, when I first read about the issue in The Blade (I live in Toledo). Then I realized that doing so would have left out of the picture the towel or whatever it is bearing the number of one of the dead players--which would have been a snub to his memory and bitterly shocking and painful for his family, I think. I agree that there's no misrepresentation of the spirit of the scene in Photoshopping out the legs, just removal of distracting clutter for the sake of compositional cleanness. Nevertheless, I feel that the legs should have been left in. In this case it's not a matter of "truthfulness", as no substantive lie is being passed off as truth; it's a matter of principles, the principle that photojournalism is about accurately depicting messy reality, which is full of clutter and annoyances and distractions. Compositional niceties are for art shots. Allowing this sort of thing to be done in straight photojournalism is stepping onto the slippery slope that leads (not far at all, IMHO) to the basketball-added photo (which also doesn't misrepresent the spirit of the scene, or Truth, or a potential Reality)--and beyond to smoke-augmented Beirut--and beyond. And in all instances, it's a matter of pragmatism as well: The only way to maintain the readers' full trust, not to mention the editors' and the Pulitzer judges', etc., is to rigorously "play it as it lays". --howard On Apr 20, 2007, at 6:27 PM, Ted Grant wrote: > That's it? Spotted out a pair of unknown legs!!! What if he just > cropped the > shot tighter and nobody would've known.