Mike Johnston's recent column and HC-B

My stand is this, whenever we put the camera to our eye we are seeking to record whatever has impacted us about what is before us. All Mike was saying in the article was to use what we have available to create the image we see in our mind. It doesn't matter if HC-B asked/hired the girl or not. He was a "people" photographer and not an architectural photographer, therefore he would want to make the stairs significant to the viewer because of the presence of a person in the shot. Sometimes we are presented with just the right scene in just the right light, but our emotional reaction is that there should be a human presence and interaction within the image. We then have a choice to make, do we recruit someone to be in the picture and add the element missing from our concept, OR do we chose to just stay there and wait(possibly a loooong time) for someone to appear just where we want them in the frame and hope the light doesn't change. The quality of light and the static parts of the scene we have relatively no control over, but the people in the scene we easily can. Either way you are still making a photograph of a person in the environment before you. Neither is dishonest or "dangerous", because it is fulfilling the vision of the photographer. What matters is , does the image convey to the viewer what the photographer felt and saw when he created it? Did the viewer feel what the photographer felt when he was there? It is the same for all forms of "realistic" graphic art whether it's photography, painting, drawing, or any other medium that represents our vision in a two dimensional format. I have a real problem though with composites done in p-shop after the fact, when elements are added into a scene that were never there at the time the photograph was made, and then passed off as if they were. That to me is where any "danger" lies.

The feeling of viewing Migrant Mother would have been perfect if the shot was taken unposed. The photographer would I feel also felt a much higher level of satisfaction.

If people feel that there is no difference between a faked orgasm and a real orgasm, let them be; personally to me the "controversy" lies in those who believe that there is no difference and insist to those who do that it's "stupid" or moot to think that there is. Even worse, that one <i>must</i> pay for it if you can't get the satisfaction spontaneously.<BR><BR>

Just because I'm not a lawyer I shouldn't say that the code of ethics does not apply to me and grease the wheels of justice by paying the court clerk to get the results you can't get through the legal process.<BR><BR>

Whether you pay for it or not, it's your business; just don't sell it as unpaid. It's like selling a rigged election as the will of the people.

Gabriel, I'm not sure what your sex life has to do with it all, but as an analogy it just doesn't fit (neither does the lawyer analogy) - both suck.

 

The term "photographer" encompasses a huge range of practices from advertising photographer, Scenes of Crime photographers, documentarians (and those like Walker Evans who looked like documantarians but in fact only "worked in the documantary style), to medical photographers to wedding and portrait photographers, to government communications (propoganda/FSA) photographers, military photographers (also, at times propaganda photographers), Hollywood unit still photographers, fashion photographers, artists, pornographers ad infinitum

 

There is no "code of ethics" or set of standards you could usefully or reasonably apply. Yet all do the same thing - make photographs. And none of them are real - all of them are constructs to a greater or lesser degree. The only thing that is real about them is they are all "real" photographs

 

Far better to study what a photograph is, what it's language or rather half-language is), how it functions in society and so on - that is in fact much more universal, and not so value laden.

<a href="http://www.tozzophoto.com">Street Photography</a> looks better when it is of something you find, not something you set up... Photographers who set up a scene are simply studio photographers who stumbled outdoors....