Was the world press winning image of the year too manipulated?

[Marko]

I just blogged about it here.
Too manipulated - what do u think?
World Press Photo of the Year Was Manipulated - Does it Matter Anymore? | Photography.ca

[Realist]

I hardly see a controversy there. It is very nicely done from the original, and creates a better mood in which the photographer was trying to convey. It's obviously a real image, and I think the end justifies the means here.

[Jason]

Tried to post directly to the blog, but it didn't save--I'll try to write the gist of what I said here...

Marko, you nailed it when you mentioned clear rules being necessary for any photo contest.

I think this holds true for photojournalism as well. I've got a few photojournalist friends here in Connecticut and at least one of them said the paper he worked for did not even allow the photographer to crop the original photo. This may be extreme, I really don't know. Regardless, I think that there is a very slippery slope when it comes to photojournalism. Before the photographer even trips the shutter he has made a decision about what to keep in the frame, what to leave out. These decisions may be aesthetic, they may be political. Regardless, they have to made to make a photo. When you get into digital processing and manipulation you are making those decisions again. I think of the Beirut photographer that did a (horrible!) photoshop job on some images that Reuters published. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_H...hs_controversy ) who knows why he did it, but photoshopping more smoke into a "news" image isn't cool. At what point does that news image become editorial or even propaganda?

As far as the World Press Photo goes, I think it is fine as a piece of art, but that wasn't the intention. As a piece of photojournalism, I have a problem with it. The changes that he made make it very cinematic--I think of Annie Liebovitz's photos of the Soprano's cast. A moving, disturbing photo, but not photojournalism. I really saw nothing wrong with the original, but the original probably would not have been an award winner.

[Marko]

Thanks for the comments jason - I took the liberty of doing a test on the blog and it took this comment. I placed a link to your flickr site.

I agree with you 100% that the image looks cinematographic and that this is due to the local dodging and burning and local tonal manipulation.
Even the first image though - that too was manipulated.

I too have a problem with the image but I have come to the point where I just accept this type of manipulation as commonplace. Complaining against it is pointless because the days of realistic colours are over - we just need to accept this.

To be fair, RAW files come out of the camera as flat so inherently manipulation is essential. That plus you have all those delicious sliders right in front of you...and they DO make the images look better. The temptation, like free alcohol is simply too great...so realism is fairly dead. In its place we now find enhanced realism. The problem is, is that there are no standards for what enhancement or manipulation are anymore. Plus for new photographers, enhanced realism is all they know and it's tastier than the way it used to be.

[Iguanasan]

It would be interesting to know if they would disqualify someone if they had shot JPEG images and had used Canon's (maybe Nikon has something similar) picture styles to boost contrast and saturation and add a little sharpening as part of the in-camera processing. You can do some amazing things in camera and the things get more and more amazing every day.

[Realist]

RAW is like film in a sense. Film needs to be developed, and can be done in many fashions. Developing film can differ from person to person. If you ever looked at a RAW in it's pure state it's pretty horrible. We need to develop it like film and add blur and correct the white balance and color.

[Andrew]

If the photo has not been altered in its composition then all we are questioning is the difference in exposure, tones, colour and contrast. Any of which can be altered in a film camera just by your choice of film and in the darkroom by your choice of developer and timing through the process. Hardly worth the effort. Digital is even wider in the scope of resources to call upon. Those arguing that an image shouldn't be altered need to also define standards for a single-source camera and its picture control settings. Also a specific software and process for turning raw into an image.

Nitpickers without the basics of photography knowledge and nothing better to do with their time.

[Marko]

I dunno Andrew... film choices will give global changes but they won't make mourning men look so cinematographic/stylized to use Jason's word.
In camera changes are also global changes.

Imo the biggest reason for this image's impact are the local changes to the individual faces.
Had this image been shot on slide film you'd see what the unmassaged reality would have looked like. The photo would still be powerful, but not as powerful. I'd bet there's a good hour's worth of PP on this image.
That just shouldn't be the case for a news/documentary type photo. It's too much make-up imo.

Ya know....in some ways this is starting to sound a lot like using steroids in sports.