Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/04/04

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Subject: Re: [Leica] fired for photoshopping
From: "Jack Herron" <jherron@theriver.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 17:35:31 -0700
References: <LNBBLBNFHNEHGFKFMALGCEBKFBAB.tim@KairosPhoto.com>

Yup, and occasionally they get caught and fired.
Jack Herron
8118 E. 20th St.
Tucson, AZ 85710
520 885-6933
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Atherton" <tim@KairosPhoto.com>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 5:30 PM
Subject: RE: [Leica] fired for photoshopping


> In a way, what we are talking about is "Photoshop Creep"
>
> It goes something like this:
>
> In the "old" days it was just black and white - if you were lucky, and the
> deadline wasn't too tight, you could play with the image a bit - different
> contrast paper. darken the skies a bit , do a bit of dodging here and
there
> to make the picture feel a bit more like you thought it should look.
>
> Then came colour and you couldn't do much with it, but pretty soon, along
> came Photoshop and desktop scanners.
>
> The colour processing was often not that great, so now you could clean up
> some of those horrid spots with the wonderful little "rubber stamp" tool -
> boy was that cool.
>
> And you could alter the colour and saturation a bit again. Make it look a
> bit more how you think it should.
>
> And Photoshop's so cool you can fool around with it - stick the editors
head
> on the body of that huge fat guy you did a story on who was so big they
had
> to take the wall of his house down to get him out. That one sure looked
> funny stuck on the office wall.
>
> But every now and then when no-one was looking, you got rid of that
> telegraph pole that stuck out of the top of some kids head, or that
> disembodied hand that somehow got in the edge of that great picture (hey -
> in the "old" days you would have just cropped it anyway right?)
>
> And then they went all digital and it became even easier. No more sitting
> there scanning - just do everything on the desktop. No-one even knows that
> the original had those annoying power lines were there in the sky or not -
> and you only do it every now and then, just to improve things. Just like
> taking out the odd dust spot from the CCD.
>
> The pay is really crap, the competitions tight and you probably had to pay
> for most of this really expensive digital gear out of your own pocket
> anyway. So, if you can just touch things up every now and then to make the
> picture sing a bit more (as the "manipulated" picture in question does,
> compared to the other to), then go ahead and do it - it's not really that
> much different than Don McCullin printing his skies so dark and ominously
in
> every picture it looks like it's just about to rain. Sure, most of the
time,
> it's dust, and sharpening and colour and contrast, maybe the odd wire or
> lamppost. But occasionally, just getting rid of something a bit more
> obvious, or moving something just a bit (after all, the photograph itself
is
> artificial - an inhuman 1/250th of a second - everyone was moving
anyway) -
> if it somehow makes the picture just that bit better.
>
> NOW - if you don't think something like this is happening in almost every
> newsroom in the country, you're fooling yourself. It's never really talked
> about, but everyone knows it goes on, to some degree or another.
>
> tim
>
>
>
>
> --
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>


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Replies: Reply from Mark Rabiner <mark@rabinergroup.com> (Re: [Leica] fired for photoshopping)
In reply to: Message from Tim Atherton <tim@KairosPhoto.com> (RE: [Leica] fired for photoshopping)