Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/11/07

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Journalism, altered photo's, and other ethical debates
From: robertmeier@usjet.net
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 15:17:44 -0600
References: <DB282119-1157-11D8-AE4F-0050E42E6E0B@shaw.ca>

> Could you be more specific? I glad you know but the rest of us do not
> know exactly what you are referring to.
>
> John Collier
>
John,

Here is what Tim said:

In the recent discussion along these lines on the NPPA-L I mentioned how
(highly respected) war photographer Don McCullin often quite dramatically
dodged and burned his skies, and by these standards a large proportion of
his images would be dismissed. Someone else responded that:

"There is a scene in /War Photographer/ where James Nachtwey is
discussing with someone the sky in a print he is having done, they go
back and make the sky darker at least three times.  No one said anything
about this because it was film and it is common darkroom practice.  If
they showed them doing the same thing in Photoshop I bet people would have
been
up-in-arms over it."

to which the response of one person (who writes a column on these matter)
was basically Nachtwey would be okay only as long as any dodging or burning
of the sky objectively and accurately reflected the sky as it was on the day
he took the picture, that the print should "reflect the scene as he
objectively saw it with his analog eyeballs". Basically, anything beyond
that was seen as manipulation and misleading the viewer...

Quite frankly it's baloney and nothing more than a sort of politically
correct or puritan fundamentalist approach to photojournalism

tim

I interpreted "it" (in "it's baloney and nothing more than a sort of
politically correct or puritan approach to photojournalism") to be referring
to the attempt to censure any manipulation beyond harmless burning or
dodging.   That is, Tim doesn't think that there should be that restriction
on manipulating an image, or, it sounds like,  any restriction.   Tim, is
that the correct reading of what you said?

Bob


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In reply to: Message from John Collier <jbcollier@shaw.ca> (Re: [Leica] Journalism, altered photo's, and other ethical debates)