Project 4 - Debating the rules and Ethics of Digital Photojournalism AND Airbrushing/Layer Mashing.

In February 2015, an article was written in the New York Times about digital photojournalism and the rights and wrongs of it. Many judges, viewers and editors spoke up to this situation, explaining why they think over editing a photo is wrong.

Michele McNally put her point across.

She stated that 20% of photographers, whos images were considered for the top 3 awards had been disqualified because they had been over edited in photoshop after comparing their final images to their unprocessed RAW files. She said some were disqualified for 'sloppy manipulation' and that some were rejected for removing things from images or adding things to them. She said they couldnt accept the images that have had things taken out of the images. When the enteries were compared to the original images they said they could not compare or recognise them being the same image. 'Shocked' was the term she used to describe them after seeing the evidence of pure lies. They felt they were being cheated and lied to. She said that all of the photographers don't believe they were doing anything wrong, but she is certain that is it wrong and not accidental. She also said its veery hard to know whats comprised and whats not.

Obviously, photographers have no intention of doing anything wrong when they think what their doing is right because it's their job to make a picture as perfect as they can. A photographer made a statement in this article to get his point across.

Photographer

He says that contests are evil. Well, in my opinion, if you know that already then don't enter the contest in the first place. He states that photographers are pressured to do more, like editing and touching up images to make them look more 'visual' and more eye catching. He says that photoshop is so much more easy to use in these days because its so easy to get hold of. He started talking about flash on a camera, how they accept photographers to use flash while taking pictures, but thats like a portable sun he said, he said it's not real light.

He said that they need to edit their images a lot to make them stand out from the crowd, to get them noticed. This photographer was disqualified last year from a contest he entered into, he said he was shocked and embarrassed. But then he said he realised he didnt do anything wrong, because he does exactly the same thing every time he enters. The judges said that the shadows in his pictures were too deep and that he darkened them too much. They asked to see his RAW files to compare the two and this year he wasnt disqualified, even though it was processed in the exact same way.

A while ago, I got shown a video, on how a photographer does a shoot of a model. This is the before and after image of the model for a Dove campaign. You can see they've changed the whole of her face, hair, neck and shoulders. They basically used this women for an outline. They have changed her hair completley, made it longer, a different colour, they've filled in her eyebrows, they've airbrushed her face ridiculously, brought her face in to make her look skinnier, made her neck slimmer, put false makeup on her, made her lips more confined and bought in shadows. This shows what photoshop and digital editing can do to one image. This is a scary situation in the idea of changing someones identity to make them look like a completley different person on a computer. Going back to what Michele McNally said, about when entries were compared to their original pictures, they could recognise that it was the same person in the picture, the photo above completley compliments that and shows that her statement is true about over editing being wrong.

In this image you can see how different they've made it. They have airbrushed his face to get rid of his spots, they've touched up his eybrows and made his lips look more subtle and soft. They have just got rid of all of his flaws. In my opinion, I think this is completley fake, it's lying to thousands of people about famous peoples identity.