Wrong Photography Ethics?

[sanj]

To me it's a matter of viewer/customer expectation: if you present this as photojournalism then it's not OK. If you present it as advertising for a vacation package, then it might be OK if the clouds are "native." I.e., if the scene is typical of the area, but you just missed the ideal photo conditions, then it's OK. If it's "art," i.e., exists purely for the aesthetic value of the image then it's a matter of personal taste. Some, like thepancakeman, seem to believe that photography is just like painting, but using different brushes, paint and canvas. Others, like me, think that what makes photography unique is that has an element of "reality" that painting does not have. To me, a photo is less interesting if it is "less real." Cut and paste is easy, but being there to capture the real thing is hard. I generally expect every photo to be essentially real, unless it is obviously not. "Obvious" here means either declared by the photographer, or obviously manipulated to the point that no reasonable person would mistake it for real. For example, I assume that a photo of Sasquatch driving a flying saucer is not real.

If you are fooling your viewer then it's cheating, with minor exceptions where fooling was an important message of the photo

The clouds are native. Hmmmm. Since we cheat in various ways from the moment we pick up the camera, I am not sure if this enhancement is a cheat.

I respect your opinion.

 

[sanj]

it is your images, you can do whatever you want your eyes are pleased right? however, as far as i know, these type of images can not be sell to someone such as national geo.

were you using blend if split and layer mask technique to change the sky? have known this technique for a while but have not had a chance to use it... very nice and clean sky replacement...

+1 to keep those trees. without them, it is kinda little blank

final answer to your question: NO

Thank you for the endorsement. Really.

Yes, layer mask.

 

[sanj]

Once you composite images, Its no longer Photography to me.

+1 Bingo... Edit its ok... composite... well...

Why? Regards..

 

[sanj]

For me nature photography is trying to capture(freeze) a (part of a) moment how you would see it, I don't see the need to try and make it 'better' than how it was.

Just keep going there until you make a real picture with those clouds if that is what you like so much, if altering reality (or at least how we perceive it) is something you like, then i would definitely shop some stalking lions in the background to add some drama! , sorry for the poor remark.

nature is artistic enough for itself, rather than craving for more I try to be happy with what it has provided.
I had a picture of a fish eagle landing on a branch, but right behind it there was a car, I would love to see the car removed , and i started doing it.... but in the process i thought why shall i fool myself?, better find a landing fish eagle without a car in the background. If i could have cropped it out i would have , but that is easier to justify for myself as i would say well: This is the shot i would have gotten with a 600mm

But to each his own? or how you would say it , if it makes you happy that the trees are gone and there are some nice clouds there, then why not?

If nature doesn't provide the shot that you like, then fabricating it might be good.

I agree. I did not get it perfect while trying my very best and enhanced it later.
Btw if I were you, depending upon the size of the car, I would not hesitate to clone it out. My logic: The car was there just that split second and could not have been there.

However, I do bow down to your honesty to your principles.

 

[sanj]

I hope this was okay I just wanted to see the difference if adjustments were made as suggested. I only took about 4 or 5 minutes so I just copied the original and tried adding some global adjustments as suggested, just for giggles...

Cooled the sky added some exposure, subtracted some exposure, saturation and sharpening, leveled the horizon... it's not that terrible but is still the original composition... Idk... Sky may be a little overdone yet but it seems like good suggestions and doesn't feel like cheating as much as correcting... I hope it was okay to do this, I wasn't trying to offend anyone.

I like it! Thank you.

 

[sanj]

.
Photography ethics?

Given the history of this genre that's almost oxymoronic.

The only real "ethics" I know in photography relate to serious photojournalism.

The most idealistic of street photographers will usually follow the photojournalistic ethics, but not all.

I think you probably owe it to the creatures you photographed to put them in the most visually pleasing context possible, so do what you will.

As for altering nature -- you alter nature with every breath you take! Human being ARE nature -- we are not somehow apart from it.

Thank you...

 

[sanj]

for me, photography (or a camera) is a "tool" to visualize an idea. sometimes it's not possible to visualize this idea just with photography and the reality. so you have to add another tools like photohop (or flashlights, or graduated filters etc.) to reach your goal.

Yessss!

 

[sanj]

I think that kind of editing is fine - but you should disclose what edits youve made to those interested. I think something looks wrong with the horizon of the edited pic. Its too soft, though i may not have came to that conclusion if i didnt see the original.

Yes Wilmark the horizon does have a problem and I will find time to fix it.

 

[sanj]

it's your work
you were honest about it being photoshopped instead of trying to pass it as a legit photo
I would not call it photo anymore, rather it's photo based artwork.
Looks good

Artwork? Must humbly disagree with this. It would be 'photography based artwork' ONLY if any artwork was involved. And thank you for the compliment.

 

[sanj]

In my humble opinion (which is often wrong - not the humble part), unless you are taking photos to go into a newspaper or photos that are intended to prove a point (i.e. polar bears swimming and drowning in iceless water etc. - no need to debate the example I chose) there is no such thing as ethics.

Any line that anyone choses to stand on is simply aesthetics and preference. There is no absolute. Photography and art are supposed to be interpretations of reality. Now, if you tell me your photo is pure reality and it isn’t that’d be cheating. If you just ask me if I like it, the fact that it is a composite is not relevant.

The idea that great photos are created in the camera is a myth. True, some great photos are created in the camera alone. I won’t argue that. However, Adams was notorious for spending hours in the darkroom in order to push his negatives and prints to replicate what he saw, his interpretation of reality. Take a look at how dark half-dome is in some of his most well-known photos. Take a look at the cemetery stones glowing in moon rise. Then watch a few documentaries or read a few books about him (not by him) and see what people say about the time he spent in the darkroom on those photos alone. The idea that beauty is created when the shutter is pressed isn’t fair, nor is it reality.

Reflecting reality the way you see it is just that, reflecting reality. It isn’t reality in and of itself. We don’t have to get into a philosophical debate and start citing Kant. But art is, I assume, wildly recognized as reflecting. You can choose to reflect it anyway you want. Some may think that it is bad art, but it is still art.

I’m often reminded of one of my favorite long-running best-friend adversarial relationships. Wordsworth and Coleridge. Wordsworth represented that his poetry was written on the fly, that something struck him and this beautiful complicated language rolled out of his head and on to his page. He even started to name poems in a way to imply this “Lines composed a few miles above Tinturn Abbey”. Excuse my butchering of his title. Coleridge, suffering from addiction and a raft of other social problems tried so hard to replicate Wordsworth’s easy-going technique. He suffered so much trying to let the words just flow. Instead he suffered, he wrote for hours on end, locked himself away for months to get the right rhyme or pattern. He did write some of the best Romantic poetry ever written – Ancient Mariner, Kubla Kahn. But he suffered. Funny thing is Wordsworth was having him on. He worked just as hard. The poetry didn’t spill out of him, he agonized over it, just like Coleridge. Difference is he never let on.

Long way to say, I think that this type of mentality, that beauty just spills out, particularly when there are dozens of tools in photography, and there always has been, to manipulate the raw negative, is way-of-base.
If Adams, Man Ray and their buddies can manipulate an image to reflect the reality they wanted, then so be it. It’s their art. It’s still a photo.

I do think that photos will suffer when pushed to far. I do like your image, but if you look at the fur, it just doesn’t look at good in the manipulated version. It suffers from the electronic manipulation. Noise, degradation. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be art though.

Enjoyed reading your story. Agree agree that 'great photos are only created in camera'.
I will reedit the photo and fix the fur. Thanks for pointing that out....!!

 

[sanj]

Well said and agreed. It would be like saying that if in someone else's opinion you take it too far, then perhaps we should ban digital photography all together and simply shoot film. Although as you aptly put, those of us that worked with film, pushed the processing in film as well...

Is there a line which creates a dichotomy between photographer and artist? Perhaps some are "Artographers". If so, perhaps it is all subject to the Artographer's vision?

I'm not offended or dismayed by anyone's vision of what they did with their photos. It's "theirs" not mine, whether I like it or not... :

In my humble opinion (which is often wrong - not the humble part), unless you are taking photos to go into a newspaper or photos that are intended to prove a point (i.e. polar bears swimming and drowning in iceless water etc. - no need to debate the example I chose) there is no such thing as ethics.

Any line that anyone choses to stand on is simply aesthetics and preference. There is no absolute. Photography and art are supposed to be interpretations of reality. Now, if you tell me your photo is pure reality and it isn’t that’d be cheating. If you just ask me if I like it, the fact that it is a composite is not relevant.

The idea that great photos are created in the camera is a myth. True, some great photos are created in the camera alone. I won’t argue that. However, Adams was notorious for spending hours in the darkroom in order to push his negatives and prints to replicate what he saw, his interpretation of reality. Take a look at how dark half-dome is in some of his most well-known photos. Take a look at the cemetery stones glowing in moon rise. Then watch a few documentaries or read a few books about him (not by him) and see what people say about the time he spent in the darkroom on those photos alone. The idea that beauty is created when the shutter is pressed isn’t fair, nor is it reality.

Reflecting reality the way you see it is just that, reflecting reality. It isn’t reality in and of itself. We don’t have to get into a philosophical debate and start citing Kant. But art is, I assume, wildly recognized as reflecting. You can choose to reflect it anyway you want. Some may think that it is bad art, but it is still art.

I’m often reminded of one of my favorite long-running best-friend adversarial relationships. Wordsworth and Coleridge. Wordsworth represented that his poetry was written on the fly, that something struck him and this beautiful complicated language rolled out of his head and on to his page. He even started to name poems in a way to imply this “Lines composed a few miles above Tinturn Abbey”. Excuse my butchering of his title. Coleridge, suffering from addiction and a raft of other social problems tried so hard to replicate Wordsworth’s easy-going technique. He suffered so much trying to let the words just flow. Instead he suffered, he wrote for hours on end, locked himself away for months to get the right rhyme or pattern. He did write some of the best Romantic poetry ever written – Ancient Mariner, Kubla Kahn. But he suffered. Funny thing is Wordsworth was having him on. He worked just as hard. The poetry didn’t spill out of him, he agonized over it, just like Coleridge. Difference is he never let on.

Long way to say, I think that this type of mentality, that beauty just spills out, particularly when there are dozens of tools in photography, and there always has been, to manipulate the raw negative, is way-of-base.
If Adams, Man Ray and their buddies can manipulate an image to reflect the reality they wanted, then so be it. It’s their art. It’s still a photo.

I do think that photos will suffer when pushed to far. I do like your image, but if you look at the fur, it just doesn’t look at good in the manipulated version. It suffers from the electronic manipulation. Noise, degradation. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be art though.

Krob all this manipulation is available even if we shoot film as we can scan and photoshop.

 

[sanj]

Once you composite images, Its no longer Photography to me.

Even HDR?
Ansel Adams pushed the technology of the developing and printing but it was all there in the negative.
Putting something into the frame that wasn't there is something else, and not what I would call photography - more like graphics arts.

Would we not reserve the term 'graphic arts' to something that involved graphics? And ALL SORTS of effects are possible in the negative.

I am a motion picture cameraman and before computer animations evolved we would easily add clouds by MANY techniques including mattes, glass painting etc.

 

[sanj]

I found the sky boring and added clouds to make it more interesting.

Do you think this is cheating? I really want to know.

Am very confused. I have made changes but not altered nature. Have I done something wrong?

Thx

Yes you did alter nature - the sky is part of nature.

Did you do anything wrong? What are you claiming? If you are claiming that is the image you took, yes you are being dishonest. If you present the picture as "art" and you can sleep at night, then you did nothing wrong.

Bottom line - two thing IMO are important. Are you being honest about the image (if you don't claim it was as shown in the 2nd print you are fine) - but you decide where to draw the line? And can you sleep at night?

After giving this a long hard look now I can sleep easily...

 

[sanj]

Compositing isn't necessarily 'digital art'...may I present from 1946 http://www.creativepro.com/content/scanning-around-gene-old-way-photo-retouching

So true!!! I hope all who claim otherwise see this... Thank you..

 

[sanj]

As long as the photographer is not entering a competition and not breaking its rules, to me it doesn't matter what the photographer does with the image, it is his image, his vision ...as far as I'm concerned he can remove/add whatever he wants. Those who are capable of making awesome changes/modifications will continue to do so while those who are incapable will continue to crib that it is unethical.

Appreciate the encouragement.

 

[jimjamesjimmy]

so what about staged shoots? where people are placed and things moved around in the scene, a famous one of these is the milkman doing his round during the blitz in london,a completely staged shot. forgetting the war propaganda for a moment, i wouldnt call that unethical, just a good picture.

the key here is subject matter, if your a photojournalist, no its not that ethical to photoshop aside from the basic levels, sharpness etc but if your an artist, hell, there are no rules.

 

[Marsu42]

It's when you start adding elements not in the original capture, It's no longer photography.

1. I'm rather late to this thread (but it hasn't reached the flamewar stage yet ), but I agree with the "adding elements" argument from RLPhoto.

The reverse means that any global adjustments and even local adjustments via ACR are ok, so if the sky from the original image of the op would have been overexposed it'd been ok to pull it down with a grad filter in LR.

One thing I'm note sure about is "repairing" small flaws in the background with ACR, it really depends on how large the impact on the general picture is - and even small layer operations like removing closed eyes of one person from a group shot with the equal part of another shot directly afterwards might be ok.

2. One argument I didn't find here is from an ad with Julia Roberts that was forced to be withdrawn because it was so heavily "beautified" that it wasn't Julia Roberts anymore, and I think in France it was feared that this is what shifts the view of what a woman is supposed to look like to an unhealthy stage.

Imho the same applies images: If everybody does it, even near-perfect "conventional" photos will look crappy - so personally I never do masks in photoshop or add foreign elements, or I wouldn't consider it an old-school "photo" anymore.

 

[sanj]

I found the sky boring and added clouds to make it more interesting.

Do you think this is cheating? I really want to know.

Am very confused. I have made changes but not altered nature. Have I done something wrong?

Thx

That's an interesting question.

The way I see it, photography is cheating. By its own definition. It's about offering a fragment of reality from a perspective that you choose, carrying a visual message that you choose. It's not different from fiction, theatre, music, dance etc. If someone expect a pic to be a faithful reproduction of reality it's his problem, because it's like watching Harry Potter and thinking that Hogwarts actually exists.

Retouching is retouching. Making a composite, IMHO, is not ethically different from smoothening someone's skin, removing blemishes, saturating colors, etc.

You are either a purist that doesn't touch his RAW files (and who would want that?), or when you start compromising and editing then the acceptable limit of that is debatable. It actually becomes a mere matter of making sensible, tasteful retouches.

I think you are saying it better than me. Photography IS cheating. AGREE.

 

[sanj]

I much prefer the altered image. I'm not sure the clouds were *needed*, but I like them and all the other changes, including the removal of those ugly, distracting, scruffy bushes/trees. Cheating? Sure, if the sole point of taking a photograph is to show what you were able to make of the scene in front of you using nothing but your ability to interact with a particular lens/camera combination.

Part of me wants to say that displaying skill/technique is part of the point of the exercise, and that adding interesting subjects and removing boring/ugly ones is as "wrong" as a recording where a pianist who hits 97 wrong notes is able to "fix" it by splicing in correct ones, or where a famous soprano's (Flagstad) high Cs were in fact sung by someone else (Schwarzkopf) and dubbed in.

Another part of me, though, wants to say that photography is different. Leaving aside honest/accurate reporting, photography is inherently deceptive/manipulative - if you can't "improve" on reality, why bother photographing it in the first place? The real thing looks better than any attempt at providing a neutral report of it. For many photographers, the best lenses are those which allow the shallowest depth of field. Why do we want them? So we can distort reality and make it appear that the subject is surrounded, not by distracting or ugly details, but by smears of light and colour. The same is true of wide angle lenses and long telephoto lenses - we want the distortions they provide. Compared to what all these lenses do, removing a few ugly bushes after the fact seems rather trivial.

Yes....!!! As photographer I want to present everything the best it can be. Regards.

 

[sanj]

I heard something on the radio yesterday - along the lines of techno electro pop fusion. It was created de novo on a computer, no instruments were used at all. The DJ called it a song. I bet if I'd Shazam'd it, I'd have found it on iTunes. Was it music? Is the person who produced it a musician or a programmer? Does it matter?

Its true, it does not matter as long as it is music to the ears.