Once upon a time, photo editing was a real chore. It took a lot of time and was tedious. You could figure on spending hours if you wanted to do anything beyond simple darkening or lightening of the picture.

A simple task we now take for granted, like taking out a feature from the photo, meant creating a whole new picture. You would then have to replace the missing element with other bits. For example, if you had a picture of a group that included Stalin and you wanted to paint out one of his associates, you were probably looking at days of work.

Nowadays that is no longer the case. With Paint, and Photoshop, and similar programs, you can change elements of your photos quickly and easily.

It’s also now much easier to change the picture entirely. This can be very unfortunate. You can now take an image and, without a lot of difficulty, take out elements or add elements that were not there when the photo was taken.

This brings up a sticky point, where photojournalism is concerned. Journalists, including photojournalists, are supposed to accurately present what happened. There is a difference between correcting the color cast of a picture, and changing a dull sky to a dark and stunning sunset.

When a journalist changes the content of the photo, to make it “dramatic” or “more representative,” this is inappropriate. It is in fact a form of lying. The photographer is lying about what was there at the time the picture was taken. You would not expect to see a celebrity’s head put on a different body. That’s the same idea.

Some would argue that there is a fine line between changing for editorial reasons and going too far. The two may be close at times but the bottom line is, the picture’s content must not have been changed. If there has been anything added to or taken from the photo in a way that changes the meaning of the image, the photographer has gone too far.

Remember this when you edit your own photos. It’s one thing if the photo is meant to be “art.” Then, the photographer can do whatever, it isn’t supposed to be strictly representative. News photography, while it can be artful, is not art and a photojournalist is a journalist and not an artist.

Besides media, this author also frequently shares knowledge about Italian charm bracelets and pearl bracelets.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 30th, 2011 at 2:46 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.