The Ethics of Photo Editing: Truth, Lies, and Views of the World
Since the earliest cave drawings, artists have interpreted the world around them in ways that best communicate what they want the viewers to understand.
Since the earliest cave drawings, artists have interpreted the world around them in ways that best communicate what they want the viewers to understand.
Photography is the art of telling stories with light. Millions of photographs evoke emotions and photographs have dramatically changed history, but there is something dishonest about photography. Something that begs the question: Is this a lie?
A Danish photo news agency recently tasked two of its photogs with creating a series that shows how easy it is to lie through photography. By shooting before and after photos of the same scene, they showed how angle and perspective can, consciously or not, manipulate viewers and lead to accusations of fake news.
While covering the "re-occupation” protest in Mong Kok on Thursday night, an Apple Daily cameraman was arrested by police after he allegedly assaulted a police officer with his camera and then resisted arrest.
There's just one problem with this story, told to the press by police: it's not true. The video above captured by a South China Morning Post reporter paints a very different picture.
How dare they!? According to a study conducted by Spredfast, 11% of Instagram users posting under the #nofilter tag are in-fact using a filter. At an estimated 8.6 million photos, the collection of fibbing photographers is growing daily.
Tony Northrup, an award-winning author and well-known reviewer of camera gear, recently put out a video that takes an interesting, in-depth look at how mirrorless camera companies might be fudging the specifications of mirrorless cameras to make them seem better than they are.
In the beginning of last month, Nokia was caught faking sample photos and footage in a promo video for the camera on its new Lumia 920 phone. A couple of weeks later, bogus information about camera sensors was found on the official website for Hasselblad's new Lunar mirrorless camera. This week, we have a new episode of "camera marketing fail" for you, this time brought to you by Phase One.
Virtually all digital still cameras capture light using either a CCD or a CMOS sensor. Most consumers don't know the difference, and -- given the rate at which CMOS sensors are improving -- both sensors perform equally well in most cases (Leica is rumored to be switching over to the CMOS camp with its upcoming M10).
However, that's not what a PC World store in Ireland wants you to believe. The photo above shows an informational placard that was on display recently in one of its stores. The top image shows a scene shot with a CCD sensor, and the bottom image allegedly shows the "same scene" shot with a CMOS sensor. Hmmm...
Photography author Ben Long has a thought-provoking article over at CreativePro in which …
The debate regarding what makes a photograph "truthful" or not is probably as old as the art of photography itself. By sheer coincidence, there were a couple interesting articles published today on this issue, and written from two different points-of-view.