The Careful Use Of Editing Photos In The World Of Journalism

Photo editing used to take a long time. When a photo editor wanted to do more than just lighten up the image, they could figure on spending hours at tedious and painstaking work.

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.

Now, computer programs like Photoshop make it quick and easy to edit photographs. This is a huge difference in the world of photo editing. Now it is easy to play with lighting and exposure.

Sadly, this means that it is also much easier to change the content of the photo itself. You can easily now present an image that is not accurate.

That’s not journalism. Photojournalists, like all journalists, are not supposed to make things up. The goal of journalism is to report on reality. It’s one thing to edit a picture because the color cast is off. It is another thing to change the color of the sky, from a sunny day at noon to a stormy one or to a brilliant sunset.

Think about it. You would not deny that putting a celebrity’s head on someone else’s body is a form of dishonesty. By that same token, changing an image to make it more “dramatic” by adding smoke, or by adding people to a crowd scene, is also very dishonest and is not appropriate in journalism.

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.

When you are editing photos, you should keep these standards in mind. How closely you need to adhere to them depends on your role. A picture that is “art” can be stylized, because the photographer is an artist. The artist has full artistic license. But a journalist is a journalist, and has journalistic standards, even when their medium is photography.

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