The idea that black and white prints have a higher degree of integrity than digital images is such nonsense.
It relieves the photographer of the responsibility of ethical conduct. The image is not made in the computer, nor iis it made by the subject. It is something entirely manufactured by the photographer.
The fact that a print is black and white is in itself a manipulation to dramatize the scene. After all, the original scene was in colour.
A
photograph is created entirely by the photographer. Everything in the image is there because the photographer put it there. More importantly, it contains nothing that the photographer wishes to remain unseen.
It is not some kind of a mini universe that holds a complete truth. It has this scary ability to conceal by omission, by just leaving an element out of the frame, which makes it a terribly inaccurate and misleading document.
The photographer makes all kinds of decisions that manipulate how the final viewer reacts to an image. Not to mention the picture editor with scissors in
hand.
If the photographer is Moral and Ethical, then he will try his best to make the image represent, as closely as possible, the truth, as he sees it. This applies to the shooting and the digital processing of the image. Taking out a reflection hardly swings the balance of the image compared to the other decisions the photographer has made.
If the photographer is unethical, there will be as many opportunities for him to bend the truth, while shooting, as there are for a digital photographer working on a computer.
Herschel
Bob <w8imo@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>No, they wouldn't. But isn't that the point? They *wouldn't know*
>that what they were seeing had been deliberately altered. For many
>articles the removal of a reflection wouldn't matter; probably for
>*most* articles. But the principle that newspapers shouldn't
>knowingly distort reality seems fairly important to me, even if it
>means they avoid doing harmless things sometimes.
Herschel Mair
Head of the Department of Photography,
Head of the Department of Photography,
Higher College of Technology
Muscat
Sultanate of Oman
Muscat
Sultanate of Oman
Adobe Certified instructor
+ (986) 99899 673
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