Ethics in submitting sports photos
I am an amateur sports photographer in a small country town. I submit photos to our local paper each week. Do you think it is OK to do some (minor?) cloning in a submission to make it "cleaner" with less distractions?
For example:
* clone out a small flag/marking cone in the background?
* clone out a foot or elbow of another player (not involved in the play) that is left in the edge/corner of the frame after a general crop?
* your football photo is not level - sloping horizon. When you rotate it, there is a small wedge of blank canvas left in a corner. Is it OK to fill that blank area in with a clone of some other grass in the scene.
... or would these be ethically wrong as it doesn't depict the scene as captured?
If it is OK to make minor adjustments, where is the line drawn? ... what is considered "acceptable" and what is not?
A little while ago I came across a website of "Top 15 manipulated photos":
http://listverse.com/2007/10/19/top-15-manipulated-photographs/
These are pretty significant changes to the "reality" of the original. So I am wondering if there is ANY leeway in making local changes to a photo submitted to newspapers? :dunno
For example:
* clone out a small flag/marking cone in the background?
* clone out a foot or elbow of another player (not involved in the play) that is left in the edge/corner of the frame after a general crop?
* your football photo is not level - sloping horizon. When you rotate it, there is a small wedge of blank canvas left in a corner. Is it OK to fill that blank area in with a clone of some other grass in the scene.
... or would these be ethically wrong as it doesn't depict the scene as captured?
If it is OK to make minor adjustments, where is the line drawn? ... what is considered "acceptable" and what is not?
A little while ago I came across a website of "Top 15 manipulated photos":
http://listverse.com/2007/10/19/top-15-manipulated-photographs/
These are pretty significant changes to the "reality" of the original. So I am wondering if there is ANY leeway in making local changes to a photo submitted to newspapers? :dunno
My opinion does not necessarily make it true. What you do with my opinion is entirely up to you.
www.acecootephotography.com
www.acecootephotography.com
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Comments
I'm going to respond as a newspaper editor, here, one with 10 years design experience, former ME of a small daily - as well as a photog. These are my guiding principles, and may not match those of others. However, I can tell you that these principles are in line with many photodesks, as well as wire services.
For example:
No.
No.
Crop tighter. Clone not.
Anything in the levels/curves/brightness/contrast/vibrance/dodge/burn/crop/rotate/sharpen* range of tools is OK, as that does not substantially alter the content of the image.
Hence, you could, if you underexposed a face, say, lighten using a curve tool and then history brush the rest of the image to original.
Your hockey pic captured a pink cast of light from the ice? You can tweak the levels to eliminate that. (Check/balance: did the eye see the pink? Probably not.)
Cloning, heavy masking - no.
*Ideally do NOT sharpen. Most pre-press/paginators will do what they need to do for the size the image will be as run.
The other realm where some alteration is acceptable is when required to do so for security or other legal reasons - but that's an editor's job, and must be wtih a disclaimer (e.g. "Police arrest a 16-year-old suspected to be involved in a string of robberies - facial features have been distorted so as not to identify the accused, in accordance with the Youth Criminal Justice Act.")
And now everyone in the forum knows why I don't like a lot of post-processing: 99 per cent of the time, the image I put in a paper is OOC with only a rotate if needed for images shot vertical, a tweak of levels, a touch (maybe) of contrast, suitable curves to compensate for dot gain, file info to embed cutline detail, convert to CMYK/grayscale.
Forum for Canadian shooters: www.canphoto.net
www.acecootephotography.com
I've tried to follow two simple rules when submitting: No altered content (i.e., adding or subtracting components in the image, aside from cropping), and adjustments only to bring the image closer to what the eye actually saw.
I once altered a shot of a particular athlete that I thought was an otherwise great image aside from the background clutter, which I totally removed. I sent it to a buddy at one of the papers I shoot for, specifically saying that it was for his enjoyment only, and not to be used as a piece of PJ. He wrote back and told me it was going to be used in an upcoming story! I quickly replied that it was altered, and gave him a link to a gallery of other shots of this athlete that were acceptable PJ images.
Most of us who do PJ are sorely tempted from time to time to alter am image. This is fine for non-PJ uses, but not cool for PJ.
http://www.youatplay.com
Noise reduction.. I've never had a need. Besides, it's going in print which doesn't replicate noise with such detail as a monitor, so I don't worry about it.
To be honest, most presses are horrible in terms of resolution. Don't worry about it in the slightest.
Forum for Canadian shooters: www.canphoto.net
http://www.youatplay.com
Even then, by the time you size your pics down to 500x500 (roughly) for most websites you aren't going to notice much noise..
www.acecootephotography.com