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Retouching Assignment

Tanya
Nov 30, 2010
2 min read

Week two (12/15) of my first semester of PH 108: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY with John Trefethen

Patience, planning and problem solving goes a long way in perfecting the art of retouching a photograph. Lets get started. Pay special attention to ALL of the marks in the "damaged" photo and be sure to remove them. Note the white line behind her head is not a hear piece.

I am so glad a few years ago I tried to retouch my grandfathers WWII photo. It was the best preparation I could have had for this assignment. I looked at all the edit layers without the background and thought "WOW, Now that was work!"

It was much smoother and easier once I got a new mouse though (of all the times your mouse has to die on you).

What action should be taken by news outlets in response to digital manipulation of photos by their staff photographers? Consider the case of the Los Angeles Times photographer who altered his images, images that later ran on the front page? Leave the photo editing to the artist. If you are shooting for the purpose of photojournalism you should know better than to adjust or manipulate your photos. Because the moment the light, color, or other “fixes” are applied they become propaganda and not truth. They become the “vision” of the photographer, not the truth as recorded. Really isn't capturing the truth also and art of its own?I think that they were right to go back and recheck the previous work of the photographer and to question his ethics. I agree with the statement may by John Klein of Getty Images, “employ people of integrity, and if you find infractions, not only take action, but take visible action.” I think it is critical that professionals set themselves to a higher standard of integrity. If you manipulate a photo be honest and state that it was altered it. Be willing to also submit an unaltered photo if needed. In the end, we as photographers are all affected by the work/ethics of each other. When a photographer such as Adnan Hajj passes off his work as truth and is caught we all pay for it in the fact that we now must prove that we have not done the same. The rules are tightened and it affects what we are then required to do.