Re: Brian Walski Fired.

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At 05:15 PM 4/3/03 -0600, you wrote:
While I am not in anyway condoning what happened, I also feel that the
reaction has been a bit too harsh and extreme.  I worked for a paper for
several years and see no real difference between what was done and the
cropping that some images get (by editors) before publication to defuse or
sometimes to inflame public opinion.

Keep in mind that nothing was out and out faked in this picture, he took
elements from two images he shoot in the same sequence and edited them
together to make a stronger image.  One of Gene Smith's most famous pictures
in Life magazine was shamelessly manipulated and elements added in the
darkroom in his famous Dr. Schweitzer African essay.  The only difference
was (and it's a big one) is that one passed itself off as straight news
where the other was a photo essay, but the secret of the Schweitzer picture
was held for many years.

I guess as it gets easier to recreate the news we all must be more
scrupulous in the way out photos are presented.

A man can write a story and edit and polish and rewrite and nothing is said
but let a photographer enhance a photo and all heck breaks loose.  Reporters
get fired, too, for CREATING newstories (and rightly so) but have a lot more
leeway in how they present the facts in their stories--it's called slant and
is a key element in writing a good piece.  Sometimes what is left out is a
lot more important than what gets left in a story.

In reality it is done all the time, I shot real estate and frequently would
move garbage cans out of the way and carefully choose my view point to
enhance the property, I even used Photoshop to remove a pop can from the
middle of a newly sodded lawn one time.  Normally I would have just walked
out onto the lawn to move the can but I sank in over my ankles when I tried.

The famous Iwo Jima flag raising over Mt. Suribachi photo is a reenactment
of an earlier event, also.  It got a Pulitzer as I recall.

Football fields are often painted green when the grass turns brown.

my two cents
darkroommike


Mike,
I agree, newspaper photos have ALWAYS been edited, often in the crudest ways, to illustrate stories. As far as journalistic honesty goes, after the shutter clicks all bets are off. Everyone is sensitive about digital manipulation. If some shooter does it in the field it is a big problem for the publication and should be dealt with. One would think that Walski could have sent both versions of the picture to his editors. I don't agree that still shots are more effective for story telling. It's all in the editing. I have been more moved by rough footage than the cliched still stuff. so far in this Crusade, er, war.


BTW the "foreign" press IS biased against the US - as is the US press biased against the fureners. How could it be any other way? Listen to NPR and the Beeb every morning and it evens out.

AZ



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