This image bears false witness, but it isn’t attempting to lie… The South Tower of One Rincon Hill (in the Financial District of San Francisco) is not poorly constructed like a 400 year old dutch walk-up. I just think it looks a bit retarded and I bent this photograph image around a bit to exaggerate that sentiment. I am not airbrushing out anyone’s face or changing any relevant details, but this image could still never fairly be considered for a journalistic story, or could it? Can a factual document use an image that is kind of lying?
Love the feel to this photo. Could be from a 70’s flim noir almost. I’ll have to look for similar subjects here in NYC.
Thanks Ed.
I don’t think the problem lies in the taking of the image or the manipulating of the image, but rather comes in the viewers association with a photograph being reality. (Would using a fish-eye lens be “lying”?)
There is a fine line. Anyone would admit that every little subjective decision made when taking a photograph (crop, focal range, tilt, angle, etc) imprints the photographer’s opinion on the photograph. This almost happens naturally, other times it goes over the top. If you are taking a shot of a tall person, and you bend down just a bit and aim up, you are exaggerating the facts, even if there is no manipulation. The photograph could skew opinions. Technically, there is no “lie” in the above pic; Instead of photoshop I could have used a weird lens, but the image now has my opinion embedded in it. Is that fair game for journalism?
Depends on the context… I have a hard time thinking of a legitimate use for this in a traditional photo-journalistic sense … certainly not for architectural use…. but in the right context if it were accompanying a piece critical of something and it was identified as a manipulated image….then maybe yeah…..like you said nothing is removed and that is huge here….. but it depends on the context….
ok, good point…the context of a critique. So then it would be appropriate for the image and text to have parallel sentiment. How would I identify the image as manipulated? A disclaimer?
” this photo has been slightly tweaked digitally ” ….. something simple … of course if the image has been radically altered in an obvious way I suppose it would be self-evident … Again the fact that nothing has been added or removed from the image is a huge here – if you do so that is when you leave the gray area …. which is where this question, for me, clearly rests ……
I agree with kc – if you’d taken the image with a fisheye lens, you may have had a non-manipulated image, but it would not have reflected reality (unless you were a fish).
If you were a reporter for fish, would you say you work for the school newspaper?
You load a film cam with Tri-X and you’re a “manipulator.” Unless perhaps you can produce a doctor’s note that you are totally color blind. And even then…
You chose a certain focal-length lens before you take a picture. Manipulation again; choosing to include/exclude certain elements.
You pose people a certain way, provoke a situation that would not otherwise occur, etc, etc and you’re “manipulating.” I can go on. And this is before you even release the shutter or bringing a file into post…
“There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is truth.” – Richard Avedon.
Yes – but … there is a place out there for legitimate documentary photography as well… it is necessary for a variety of reasons and needs to maintain a certain integrity to be useful …..again the context in which any image appears becomes critical … straight photography, fine art, surreal ….and on and on……
I’ve always thought the building looks like one of those fan tower you buy in Walmart to keep the air circulating.
I just find this concept so hard to imagine. I don’t think I have ever read or seen anything that is supposed to be a documentary or a journal that doesn’t contain some degree of bias or “angle”. I usually find myself agreeing or disagreeing more with the documenting than with the subject. This can be a little frightening, because society takes the printed word as public record.
Ethical standards in the digital age are becoming, more and more, a moving target … It’s very hard to “trust” documentary content completely anymore ….. regrettably