[Leica] NPR comments on photography

[hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter)]

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.