PhotoDude.com

Sun. Aug 31, 2003

Too Dark for Photojournalism

Too Dark for Photojournalism – A photojournalist recently got accused of “overmanipulation,” and lost some awards and income over it. I’d heard about this story a couple of weeks ago, but now (thanks to Dangerousmeta), I see there’s a thread full of comments at Metafilter, as well as a rather harshly judgmental statement from the President of the organization that took away a photographer’s awards, and most importantly, a chance to see the before and after versions of the images in question.

Along the way, there’s some things to be learned about the differences between digital and film, and in this case, perhaps even the way they are perceived.

For background, you can read “Observer photographer loses awards”: “The N.C. Press Photographers Association has rescinded three awards given to Observer photographer Patrick Schneider in its 2002 statewide competition. The board ruled that Schneider had altered the editorial content of some photos he entered by overly darkening some portions in the digital editing process.”

His sin? An alleged overuse of traditional darkroom techniques in a digital setting. Dodging and burning are two “wet” darkroom techniques used to lighten or darken specific areas of a print. If you see a professionally printed image, odds are close to 99.8% that some area of it has been dodged or burned. It can be done very subtly, like lightening the skin tones of a face, or slightly darkening the corners and sides of a print so that the eye is drawn to the central subject. Or it can be quite dramatic, like the darkened skies of Ansel Adams work, or the deepened tones of Eugene Smith’s work.

While Ansel was no photojournalist, Eugene Smith worked for Life magazine, and shot some of the most important photo essays of the last century. These techniques have been used in varying degrees within photojournalism for decades, but they apparently cost Patrick Schneider. And while he didn’t lose his job (just the awards), he was reprimanded and given a three day suspension.

I have to start off by saying that I belong to the school of thought that holds there is no such thing as an objective photograph (with the possible exception of the accidentally tripped shutter, like those first-of-the-roll shots you sometimes get of the sidewalk and your shoes). No matter how hard a photojournalist might try, he/she is being subjective by their choice of where to point the camera, where they position themselves, by their choice of lens (wide to include context, or telephoto to eliminate it?), by the moment they choose to snap the shutter, and finally, by the way in which they edit the resulting images down to the one see in print.

To me, there’s an inherent contradiction in the need for any impassioned photographer to show the world their informed and developed vision, and the seemingly contrary rules of “The Objective Photojournalist.” But then, I’ve never claimed to be a photojournalist, so I could be full of crap on that one.

However, when I first heard about this story, I wondered just how extreme his manipulations might have been. Now, we have a Flash movie that allows us to compare the original images with the ones that were published.

Photo #1 gives us good examples of what I would consider both acceptable and unacceptable uses of digital dodging and burning. First, look at just the faces of the firefighters. In the original, there’s poor lighting and weak skin tones. Schneider’s manipulation solves those problems sort of crudely (note the orange eye on the left), but though he’s altered their facial tones, that step doesn’t affect content of the image.

However, he apparently also thought the background was distracting, so rather than simply darken it some, he darkened it to an effective black. This, in effect, removes the subject from the context of their setting (blurred though it may be), and does indeed alter the content of the image. I would have to agree, he went too far in this image. Half the darkening would have been acceptable to me, as it would have retained that context, while minimizing its distraction.

But on Photo’s #2 and #3, I do not see what the beef is. In #2, what I see reminds me a bit of what happens in Photoshop when you click “Auto Levels.” It is far from a heavy manipulation of tonality, and falls well within what I would consider “standard darkroom work.” No element or context is altered or removed by the simple and slight tonal shift. This looks more like “guilt by association” than “excess manipulation.”

In Photo #3, the composition of the image shows me a photographer clearly trying to do a standard image of a silhouetted person against a dramatic sky background. Viewing the original, I see a bad exposure … the camera’s meter was fooled by a backlit contrasty situation. So in the darkroom (digital or traditional), you fix the exposure to regain the silhouette that was intended. Sure, it’s a problem that’s easier and quicker to solve in Photoshop than a wet darkroom, but that ease of use isn’t the issue here.

Or is it?

The president of the N.C. Press Photographers Association, Chuck Liddy, had this to say: “As journalists, we believe that credibility is our greatest asset. In documentary photojournalism, it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way (electronically or in the darkroom) that deceives the public.”

OK so far, it’s hard to argue with that.

“We all use Photoshop [...] But with this great new technology come grave and serious risks. You might say, ‘Gosh, I don’t like the way this background looks I can get rid of this with a couple of keystrokes’. No contortions in the darkroom with your hands and a dodging wand. No making ten or fifteen prints over a two hour period to get that print just right. Nope, just go and use the lasso tool, yank those levels to the max and VIOLA! the background disappears.”

Is it just me, or do you hear the implication that if you did spend hours making dozens of prints in order to achieve the altered result … it would somehow be … purer? More acceptable? Viewed perhaps as an overly detailed piece of workmanship? Isn’t this about the intent of the operator, not the tool they are operating?

“Burning has always been an acceptable action. Burning to ‘de-emphasize’ a background is something all of us do. But deleting the background by using some of the powerful tools Photoshop offers is totally unacceptable and violates the ethics code we adhere to. Deleting a background alters the content of a photograph.”

In Photo #1, that would be true. But the second and third photos do not delete any content or context that alters the “story” told by the photograph. The public has not been deceived.

“We looked at raw files provided by Charlotte. The evidence was conclusive. Backgrounds gone. Some questionable imaging of other photos. In a unanimous vote our Board of Directors voted to rescind three awards presented to Patrick in February.”

Backgrounds? Only one was “gone.” If you are going to publicly castigate a fellow professional, the least you could do is be accurate. It seems to me that stripping Schneider of the award for Photo #1 is quite valid, but taking the rest of his awards comes across as punishment for being a Bad Boy, not a valid assessment of those two specific images.

“And make no mistake. We will NOT tolerate manipulation of this degree. Ever. It’s not just because we have rules to follow in contests, it’s because we’re journalists and it’s the right thing to do.”

Nice grandstanding. But now that I’ve seen the images themselves, your resolve to “do the right thing” looks excessive by a factor of two. I guess it’s better to err on the side of ethics, but this whole topic does bring up some interesting points about the new realities of digital imaging.

The Metafilter thread has some interesting comments and questions: “One difference between film and digital, before the darkroom, is that with a digital camera, you don’t have anywhere near the wide range of different films available. I’ve started to take into account the characteristics of the film I’m using, or, conversely, select film depending on what I’m going to be photographing. Since this variety of effects is not available to digital ’film’, I believe digital photography should be given more latitude with after-effects.”

I see the point, but mostly disagree. While there is certainly a wider range of film types, from shot to shot, with a digital camera I think I’ve got more options. I can take one shot at a speed of ASA 100 in daylight, and the very next one at 1000 ASA under tungsten light. With film, you have to switch cameras or switch film types.

However, part of that versatility that digital offers actually occurs in post-processing. Another commenter at Metafilter says: “...I’m a Photography major and the head of my dept. says the darkroom is dead and that he will never set foot in one again. I tend to agree with the thinking that it’s too easy to use Photoshop. It takes a lot of know how to pick the right film for the circumstance as well and choosing the right exposure and shutter speed to get the best image, but if you can then very little darkroom manipulation is necessary.”

While that statement may be true, it also points out the very different nature of digital photography. When Liddy said, “We looked at raw files provided by Charlotte,” he may not have meant the Camera RAW format that many digital cameras use, but it is an important format to understand. In fact, elsewhere in the thread, someone calls for “a file format that would capture and perpetuate an authenticated ‘baseline’ copy of the original image.” I think a Camera RAW image is just that.

A digital camera may have all kinds of preferences you can set for white balance, higher color saturation, lower contrast, or for sharpening. But none of them affect the way the image is recorded by the camera’s sensor. All of those settings are “post processing,” done after the sensor has unloaded its capture.

The Camera RAW format is the equivalent of the film negative, and more. When I take a picture, each of the 6 million pixels in my Canon D60’s sensor records incoming light for the length of time the shutter is opened. The sensor “saves” the values each individual pixel records, and that is the data in a RAW file. It will also note the camera settings at the time of exposure (tungsten color balance, low contrast, no sharpening), but it doesn’t actually alter the pixel data by applying them.

When I later open that image in a RAW format converter, that software will take the camera settings at the time of exposure and apply them to the RAW data. However, I can completely change the color balance, the saturation, the contrast, the level of sharpening, and the overall brightness of the image (up to two stops). And I can make those gross alterations because the underlying data out of the camera is still raw, unmanipulated at even the lowest “darkroom level.” Since that is the case, I personally often “over expose” the image, due to the unique way digital images are recorded. Such an image will always have to be darkened from its RAW state, and the only guideline is, not only what the photographer literally saw at the time, but what they intended.

Thus, what appears to be “an original” may in fact be an overexposed RAW image that was never meant to be presented in that manner. That was just the best way to record the maximum amount of data … for future manipulation.

This is the nature of the digital darkroom process. The goal is to capture as much data as possible, from the highs to the lows. Then and only then can you move the data, either within the camera’s post processing (this is what happens when you shoot and save as JPGs) or in software after the fact. And what tonal range you move it to is left to what the photographer previsualized when he snapped the shutter.

It certainly won’t look much like that original RAW file.

My point is this: before you accuse someone of manipulating a digital image away from its original state, realize that every image digitally captured is being significantly manipulated from the very microsecond the data leaves the sensor. From that point on, it is a matter of the quantity of manipulation, the intent of it, and the end usage of the image.

Schneider went too far in the first photo, both in quantity and intent. But what is “too far” is defined by the intended usage of that image: photojournalism. While we revel in a visual world where Spiderman, dinosaurs, and talking chihuahuas all appear real in media imagery, we want to be able to really believe what we see in at least one arena: the simple news photo.