lw124010@ohio.edu
Photos need to be edited for publications all the time, and
so it makes sense that one would ask the question “how much editing is too
much?”
Personally, to answer this question I hold to a few simple
guidelines: edit little, edit for accuracy and clarity and don’t be selective.
The Need for Editing
I’ve edited many photographs for newspapers,
and I can identify several issues that are inherent to publishing images that call for editing as a solution. Newspapers,
for example, will often print an image darker than the same image would print
on regular paper (due to newspaper’s darker color), and as such the clarity and
accuracy of an image can easily be compromised if this isn’t considered. To
account for this, the image’s exposure may require lightening with software.
Photographers also aren’t infallible, and neither are their
cameras. Especially when covering conflict zones, photographers aren’t always
afforded the luxury of being able to prepare their shutter speed or aperture
for a properly exposed photo. Take the following picture, for example, by photographer
Chris Hondros:
 |
| Getty Images / Chris Hondros, taken from www.cjr.org |
In an interview, Hondros explained that the low light,
combined with the fast pace of the situation, led him to believe that this very
image, when he shot it, may well have come out a dark, blurry, indecipherable
mess. And so it’s easy to imagine why some photos are captured with exposure
that is inaccurate, and may need lightening or darkening for publication.
Then, perhaps the most obvious example of an accepted form
of image-editing, there is the black-and-white image. Preparing (or shooting) a
photo for black-and-white publication changes the entire image, so that not one
dot of ink necessarily represents the actual colors of the scene when it
happened in real life, yet it is found in everywhere in newspapers and is
considered an accurate means of presenting an image.
Where, then, is the line between fact and lie if an entire image can be changed to meet the requirements of the printing process, or to ensure the image’s accuracy?
Again, my answer is simple: don’t be selective. AllanDetrich’s integrity wasn’t compromised because he corrected the white-balance
of his image on his computer so that the subjects didn’t appear green-tinted. AdnanHajj didn’t loose his job because he used Photoshop to properly lighten a
slightly underexposed photograph so that it printed clearly on the front page
of a paper. These photographers’ integrity were compromised because they
discriminatively changed parts of the image that were unrelated to clarity, and
certainly unrelated to accuracy.
They lied.
And while some may even consider Detrich’s lie small,
journalists aren’t permitted to change a quote simply because it makes the
sentence flow better. Inserting brackets isn’t the smoothest way of presenting
information, but the alternative isn’t to just tweak the quote.
A journalist’s commitment is to the truth, not to
aesthetics.
The Power of Images (In so Many Words)
To the point of aesthetics, I would like to close this post
on a brief tangent to a Poynter article that addresses how images are set up
by, say, politicians to convey a certain message. While I believe the article
was in part intended to get the reader to consider how reported events
have been intentionally groomed and polished, I believe the article is a good
cautionary tale about the power to influence reception through visual media.
It is a relevant anecdote that after the first televised
presidential debate in 1960, spectators who watched the debate on their
televisions tended to consider the handsome, well-groomed Kennedy the victor,
while radio-listeners tended to believe that Nixon, although unshaven and
without makeup on television, walked away with the edge. This would support the
claim that aesthetics can influence the reception of a piece of visual media,
giving photographers all the more reason to avoid editing for the sake of
aesthetics or angle, and to instead focus on accuracy to maintain a lack of bias.
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