Sad Story of a fake picture!

[Anthony]

I think it is rather complicated.

"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."  GK Chesterton.

Context and integrity, for example are relevant.

If a photographer presents an image as fairly reflecting reality, when it does not, then that is dishonest.  Photography for legal proceedings would be one example, news reporting is another.

The fact that there are other ways of deceiving people, eg by selectively framing the image with the viewfinder, just shows that editing on the computer is not the only way to be dishonest – it does not justify dishonesty by editing.

Nor does the fact that different film types give different rendering justify dishonesty.

Recently a UK politician had his imaged Photoshopped into the photo of an event he had not actually attended.  You can imagine that the reaction was not very favourable.

Recently, I tried and failed to capture the Supermoon.  I could have created a convincing Supermoon image in Photoshop and posted it on a thread of authentic images of that event.  That would have been artistically dishonest, and no doubt would have irritated the photographers who had successfully captured the real thing.

Sometimes I see photos of beautiful sunsets, which are presented as something the photographer saw the previous night.  The value of the photo arises from the fact that it authentically presents a beautiful natural phenomenon.  If I find out that it has been largely created on the computer, then I lose interest (other than in the technical aspects).

This tells us that in the world of nature photography, people care about authenticity.  There is a lot of cynicism today because so many images are significantly manipulated.  I am sure we have all been asked the question "Was it really like that or did you just do it in Photoshop?"  If the answer is that it really was like that, the viewer is usually impressed.  If the answer is that the lovely sunset was actually created by clever use of Photoshop then the response is usually along the lines of "Meh!" (unless the viewer is an admirer of Photoshop skills).

The BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition and NatGeo have strict rules on the degree of editing allowed.  This is because viewers want to know that the images displayed are authentic.

There are other areas where editing is an issue.  There is a lot of controversy over manipulating model images to make the model seem much slimmer, with some saying that this encourages anorexia.

On the other hand, many people have no problem with the tidying up of an image, eg by removing the pesky tourist in the pink shirt from in front of the beautiful view.

Editing for art is fine, but if the image is presented as being an authentic representation rather than the artistic vision of the photographer, one then gets into morally ambiguous territory.  There are lots of grey areas, and different people will draw the line in different places. 

There is a lot more that could be said on this debate, but I think it is clear that there is not one simple answer that fits all circumstances.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

The oldest picture in existence shows the roof tops of Paris with shadows to both sides. Thus, illusions are an integrated part of photography since its inception. Just accept that images never are 'true'. They exist and convey ideas. The 'denigrating' part would be to state photographs lack ideas or character or don't tell a story.

[elsa hoffmann]

I am not a purist. I have never claimed to be. I don't have to tell anyone if I make a composite or not - and the days where people all got their hind legs up about Digital vs Film is long gone (as they said digital is always manipulated - their excuse - not mine)

For me - every single image is manipulated. EVERY SINGLE ONE

The very first image was Black and white. No one sees in black and white -
images taken in portrait format - we see with 2 eyes - in landscape format -
Our brains take in a scene - a photo captures a fraction of that


But a competition is about rules. Follow them if you want to enter.

[Tristin]

I have no issue with agreeing to disagree, and I think it's cool you disagree.  I certainly am not the person to state the way all things ought to be done, felt or thought!

[Lowell]

This conversation is fascinating and to me very useful.  To me it all comes down to the fact that a photo captured with a camera is not the same as how we "see" the world.  As Frisby contends, we see with our 'brains" and not our eyes.  We cast our gaze about, feel the motion of air, know what is behind us, we integrate noises and smells to "View" the scene before us.  We are looking down a tube with poor peripheral vision, which is designed with pretty good capability to capture motion and some context.  We remember lots about the scene, which simply can NOT be in a photograph. 

I learn much about photography when these topics come up!

Lowell

[elsa hoffmann]

This conversation is fascinating and to me very useful.  To me it all comes down to the fact that a photo captured with a camera is not the same as how we "see" the world.  As Frisby contents, we see with our 'brains" and not our eyes.  We cast our gaze about, feel the motion of air, know what is behind us, we integrate noises and smells to "View" the scene before us.  We are looking down a tube with poor peripheral vision, which is designed with pretty good capability to capture motion and some context.  We remember lots about the scene, which simply can NOT be in a photograph. 

I learn much about photography when these topics come up!

Lowell

well put.

[atpaula]

Regardless of all discussion, I find the picture poor, ugly and uninteresting. I fine example of how a photo contest might be a joke.

[Lowell]

Regardless of all discussion, I find the picture poor, ugly and uninteresting. I fine example of how a photo contest might be a joke.

Aguinaldo,  this comment is just priceless!!

Lowell

[Mike G]

Agunaldo, you are quite right!

[Peter Forsell]

I actually like the winning picture, and I must admire the gall of the photographer.

The conversation has been interesting and I can relate to almost everybody's position. I can see where the "no manipulation" photojournalists and documentary photographers come from, but identically I can see and appreciate the point of even the very extreme "anything goes" artists.

(opinion)
Still, I confess I like the kind of elemental and reckless, even rebel, attitude of the photographer. He didn't even try to hide his tracks in the image. And in the end, the obscure casual "never heard" competition got a lot of attention. Well done both Nikon and Yu Wei. Thumbs up.
(opinion off)

 

[simato73]

I really appreciate what Bjorn is saying.  I learned much about this when I published this image on the old Nikon Gear some time ago.  As I passed this little cascade one morning, there was a photographer there taking photographs.  I had passed this location many many times.  When I returned, he had gone and I got out to photograph this attractive scene.  "Look how the cascade was framed".   I then realized that it was "Staged".  There were no red maple leaves there in the natural scene, neither the yellow Aspen leaves close to the cascade.  I had been duped?  By the way the bending Aspen tree above the water was NOT staged. 

What followed was some really helpful comments about what a photograph is.  Essentially, all studio photography is staged.  But its just not the studio and lighting.  Perspective, especially as relates to telephoto and wide angle lenses, is not as we see it with our eyes.  Even such a simple things as cropping changes greatly what a photograph communicates.  We crop, erase, and clone all the time.  I always considered this as acceptable.  Being "duped" was something I felt because of my presumptions and not some sinister action of the previous photographer.

Photo journalism has its own set of rules which are more strict relative to what kind of editing is acceptable, since it can of course changed what is "implied" by the image.

I find this kind of discussion very enlightening.

Lowell

I think I remember that thread.
I had a robust conversation with someone in it.
I was incensed that a "nature" photographer could conceive not just "setting up" a scene in a relatively innocuous way - not my thing, but the world is wide and there is space for many different tastes - but also cut down branches from live trees (the red aspen) to move them to where they fit better his vision. And if I remember correctly the place even had some sort of protected natural status!
The other person was quite unmoved by the argument that someone should not damage a natural place to get the shot.

As for compositing, it is just a step further from the use of other common photographic techniques.
Each one has different standards and may draw a different line at what is acceptable manipulation, but as Bjørn said not a single image is a perfectly true depiction of reality and all to some extent are manipulated. Even images for "objective" uses are not completely true representations, although they do come closer than many other images and most importantly they comply to more stringent rules.
I personally am not too keen on compositing but there is nothing wrong in itself and on rare occasions I too have done it.
It all depends on the context. If it is a photo contest and there are rules against it, don't do it.
If you did it, but are stating you didn't, it's a lie. In most contexts other than a competition and "fact reporting" (journalism, forensic, scientific, etc) compositing is not a problem, but lying about it is never OK.

[Lowell]

Simone,

I remember that exchange now.  Yes, this area is "protected".  This particular canyon has over a million visitors each year and one is not to cut down trees or branches.  As I have mentioned, I find these conversations to be really instructive as well as interesting.

Thanks

[Anthony]

If you post something which looks natural but is composited, without telling the viewers that what they are seeing is not at all what was there, is this acceptable?  Eg if I had posted a Photoshop created Supermoon image in the thread of Supermoon images, without disclosing that it was a composited image, I think that would have been dishonest.

[simato73]

If you post something which looks natural but is composited, without telling the viewers that what they are seeing is not at all what was there, is this acceptable?  Eg if I had posted a Photoshop created Supermoon image in the thread of Supermoon images, without disclosing that it was a composited image, I think that would have been dishonest.

I appreciate it is a grey area and individual sensibilities may be different.

Personally I think more or less anything goes and one does not have to state what they have done to their picture, as long as they are not making some untruthful claim about it.
If the composite is very evident I think there is no controversy - it is so blatantly obvious.
When the compositing is so well done that it is not distinguishable from "reality" I appreciate that some may consider it "lie by omission". I don't agree because this is attributing to the "offender" the intention of deliberately misleading the viewer, which may or may not be the case.
Even if the creator is deliberately misleading (but not lying outright) I could accept it in some circumstances, although in all cases my very personal reaction to discovering that a remarkable shot is in fact a composite, or some other similar gross alteration of the original scene, would be to lose interest in it.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

This is up to each person to decide on their own. If you had envisioned a bright moon and as it turned out, something irrelevant intervened and you didn't get it exactly as you had planned, is anything gained or lost by being puristic? No fixed answer for that I'd guess.

There is a precedent in nature photography for making composites even in the field of documentation. Focus stacking thus is essentially nothing than an ordered sequence of composites normally arranged and blended by automated procedures, that in the extreme end easily can be encompassed by a two-layer blending done manually.