Assessment Criteria 5

Demonstrate how visual codes associated with conventional photographs can be called into question with digital techniques

Study the images and list any differences between them

Why did the photographer make the changes?

How has the visual meaning changed?

What might be the consequences of the changes?

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

Photograph by Adnan Hajj  /  ReutersAug. 2006 - Reuters withdrew this image of smoke rising from burning buildings after an Israeli airstrike Saturday on the suburbs of Beirut after evidence emerged that it had been manipulated to show more smoke. The manipulated image is shown on the left. The unaltered image, shown on the right, has since run.

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Sept 2010: Ex Egyptian president Mubarak — who was originally on the far left of the photo — is now leading the team down the red carpet. Not only has he been moved, his image has also been reflected. This is how it appeared in Al-Ahram, Egypt’s state-run newspaper:

Al-Ahram is Egypt’s largest newspaper, with a reported circulation of over a million

Klavs Bo Christensen's pictures were removed from the Danish Union of Press Photographer's "Picture of the Year" contest when judges compared his images to his RAW files and noticed he used exaggerated coloration in his submissions.The rules stated: You may post-process images electronically in accordance with good practice. That is cropping, dodging, converting to B&W as well as normal exposure and colour correction which preserves the image’s original expression.

The judges deemed the over saturated work “unacceptable”

photo by Brian Walski of the Los Angeles Times.

Walski was on assignment in Basra, Iraq, during the height of the initial ground war in 2003. That picture ran on page one of the LAT and the Hartford Courant. The only way Walski got caught: Careful examination of the original shows several people in the background that appear twice.

Initially, the photographer — Allan Detrich — reportedly denied he had photoshopped the picture. Then he said he had changed it for his own copy but then had accidentally transmitted it to the photo editor.The paper suspended him and began combing though 14 weeks of files he had shot so far that year.

Donald Winslow of the National Press Photographers Association reported:Detrich submitted 947 photographs for publication in 2007, right up through his last week of work. Of those 947, 233 were published either in the newspaper or on the Blade’s Web site. Editors have determined that 79 of the photographs were clearly digitally altered.

Award-winning photographer Bryan Patrick has been fired from his newspaper, the Sacramento Bee for violating the paper’s ethics policy.

The picture on the right was a combination of the two on the left. Notice any repeats?

This was an entry for the world press photo, it would have won if it had not been disqualified. The offending image is by Stepan Rudik.

The issue was not the crop, the black and white conversions, grain or contrast etc. it was the fact that he removed the person from behind the figure. This minor correction was the reason the image was disqualified. Is this justified?

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The photograph above left, released on the news website and public relations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Sepah News, has been apparently digitally altered to show four missiles rising into the air, instead of three, during a test-firing Wednesday in Iran. The third missile from the left has apparently been added to cover up the missile on the ground that may have failed during the test.

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Edward Curtis is also known to have manipulated the images he produced for his books. The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis One image in particular, In a Piegan Lodge, 1910–Volume Six, Portfolio Plate 188 is a prime example.

In this doctored photo of Queen Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon — mother of Queen Elizabeth II — and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in Banff, Alberta, King George VI was removed from the original photograph. This photo was used on an election poster for the Prime Minister.

his Pulitzer Prize winning photo by John Filo shows Mary Ann Vecchio screaming as she kneels over the body of student Jeffrey Miller at Kent State University, where National Guardsmen had fired into a crowd of demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine. The photo originally featured a visually distracting fencepost behind Mary Ann Vecchio’s head, but this was removed by an unknown photo editor in the early 1970’s. The modified photo then was published in Life magazine and other publications.

Avedon’s instructions to his printer

BRIEF 9 Montaging Digital Images

PART TWOCreate your own codes of convention (bulleted list) for using Photoshop commercially as a Fashion Photographer or PhotoJournalist in the U.K. Include an introductory paragraph explaining why we need a code of convention. Use some examples of photographs by existing commercial photographers to illustrate your point.

Assessment Criteria 5 Demonstrate how visual codes associated with conventional photographs can be called into question with digital techniques