What is considered "Manipulation"?

[vic_.]

I have a mental struggle with the concept of �manipulation,�

especially nowadays, where we have software such as Photoshop that

can perform all kinds of magic with the stroke of a mouse.

<P>Manipulation of some sort seems to have taken place since the

beginning of photographic time. It seems acceptable to darken,

lighten, push/pull process, etc., dodge, burn, whatever other terms

that have been used in the pre computer age. Time exposures seem to

give photographs light, and what could not be seen by the naked eye

is made visible. These all don�t seem to be understood as

unacceptable manipulation.

<P>With software one can enhance colors, provide blur, etc., and

these are viewed as manipulation.

<P>The line seemed to be drawn at this place: <B>One <U>cannot</U>

move things around once the negative has been made.</B> But today,

one can, it�s so easy.

<P>A particularly tragic (and comic) incident took place on

Photo.net, and if you haven�t seen it, here is the link. Amazingly,

clouds seem to have moved, seem to have been in many pictures, etc.

We should be thankful for the high integrity of our moderators.

<BR><B>http://www.people.virginia.edu/~edb9d/temp/exile.htm</B>

<P>Where is the line drawn? Does is make a difference if I move

objects around in a picture to make it more artistic? Or is the

negative where the line is drawn? Is it enough to say that

manipulation took place, and not elaborate further? What kind of

manipulation is not considered manipulation? (Obviously, to

manipulate and then state that one did not, is plain dishonest.)

[m_.]

nothing and everything.

 

the real question is how much you will personally want to manipulate your photos. for me, i want only dodging/burning if possible and i don't normally even consider cropping, at least when i am shooting the frame, i try not to think about cropping. i do cropping for less than 5% of all the frames i shot. i don't like the concept of "getting it worng and correcting it later" but that doesn't necessarily say i wouldn't think a good photo because it had been manipulated.

 

not mucha help as always...<div></div>

[Spearhead]

What body is going to enforce some arbitrary rule on "manipulation"? Art didn't develop because people had to obey some set of rules about how they did things, it developed because innovators tried whatever was available. This is very true of the development of photography, by the way.

[art waldschmidt]

It seems that the issue of manipulation (and the larger issue of "integrity") depends upon the individual's perception of what is essential to the identity of the medium. In my own approach (traditional b&w), the identity of the medium would be negated by the kind of tampering that allows for the addition or subtraction of objects that were recorded on the negative. I actually enjoy the perceived "limitations" of traditional b&w in comparison with the ease of manipulation that obtains in digitography. Maybe the orientation toward limitless adjustment and manipulation (in digitography) is closer to the "psychology" of drawing or painting, rather than the psychology of seeing photographically?

[jbq]

Anything and nothing is manipulation.

 

You could argue to one extreme that only some lenses can claim to give an "unmanipulated" look. Extreme wide angles or long telephotos offer a combination of detail and perspective that a naked eye can't reach. You could argue that you need a 50mm or 35mm lens (assuming 24x36 film), but in reality human eyes see much wider than than, just with very fuzzy and colorless edges. Then you could argue about the aspect ratio. How about the aperture? Too big or too small an aperture looks unnatural. How about the shutter speed? Natural-looking pictures of moving subjects are achieved with a 1/30s shutter speed and panning. Shutter speeds much longer or much shorter than that show things that a naked eye can't see. How about distortion? I have the definite feeling that I percieve no distortion with my naked eyes, but that my glasses introduce some barrel distortion.

 

To the other extreme, you can argue that it doesn't matter. All that matters is the final result.

 

As a middle ground, there's a group of people who are used to what can be achieved with a wet darkroom and consider it "normal". Anything that falls outside of that range starts to feel "manipulated" to them. Contrast adjustments, dodging/burning, color corrections are accepted as being "normal" by most people. Contrast masking or perspective correction start to be "advanced". I'm not a darkroom expert, but I imagine that color-correcting a sky or selectively blurring a background are possible but tedious.

[h._p.]

Personally, I can't be bothered to do much manipulation outside of tidying up the contrast, removing a colour cast or cleaning up dust spots. If other people wish to do more, then fine, it's the final image that counts.

 

The only caveat I personally would add is that reportage of any sort should be unmanipulated. The recent fracas about the sacking of a news photographer who manipulated his images was justified in my opinion. It's hard enough to know who to trust these days without people pasting in characters who weren't there originally.

[al_kaplan1]

I'll go along with the traditional burning and dodging, often required to show detail in shadow or highlight areas, or to make things less visually competitive with the main subject. I do that on every print, without much thinking about it.

[gary_ferguson1]

"Manipulation", in a pejorative sense, isn't a term that's constant across the photographic spectrum. What's considered manipulation by a serious journalistic photographer would be thought of as minimal intervention by an advertising still-life photographer.

[keith_merrill]

Harvey said - "The only caveat I personally would add is that reportage of any sort should be unmanipulated. The recent fracas about the sacking of a news photographer who manipulated his images was justified in my opinion. It's hard enough to know who to trust these days without people pasting in characters who weren't there originally."

 

 

I agree totally. I figure it like this, manipulation for art, when the artist has a reason for doing so, is all well and good. Photojournalism should be truthful, manipulation like taking out backgrounds and combining two pictures is falsification. If you can't get the shot you want to tell the story that is happening, you need to become a better photojournalist. I can forsee a day when papers don't even send a photog to the scene, they just combine elements from an image database and presto, there is a nice and lovely shot of people crying over a fallen comrade. Great front page spread.

[Spearhead]

<i>the individual's perception of what is essential to the identity of the medium</i><p>

 

The individual cannot define the identity of the medium. The individual can only determine their own personal working parameters. The "identity of the medium" is a much bigger entity than what one person thinks, although an argument can be made that certain individuals (like John Szarkowski) have a huge influence on the perceived identity.

[neil_parker]

'Manipulation' of an image is a state of mind! Or a byproduct of the intent of the image. If you are creating an image designed to persuade or to convey an idea or philosophy, then anything you can do to increase that power is OK, don't you think? It is physically 'manipulating' to use good lighting and to pick a specific focal length, and to even compose to make one thing stand out more than another, this is 'manipulation.' Its OK to make the print as good as possible. The great darkroom masters of the past never hesitated to bleach, control the gamma curves of the film, to dodge and burn and yes even swap bits around! Eugene Smith was know to steal gestures from different frames to make an 'ideal' image.

 

The big quandry is in reportage, its not okay to make a crowd bigger, or to swap in a menacing gesture from another shot. This creates a 'perceived reality' that didn't exist, so therefore a 'lie'. But is it okay to make the tonality and lighting more dramatic, to emphasize a point? That's certainly an accepted practice in the darkroom.

[dan flanders]

�The line seemed to be drawn at this place: One cannot move things around once the negative has been made.�

Not so! Photographers have been dodging, burning, adding, subtracting, moving stuff around . . . you name it . . . Since the beginning of photography! Old time photographers used to do family portraits that way. If they couldn�t get the gang together they took separate images and made a collage. Some of it was crude and some of it was damned realistic, but they did it long before Henry Mortensen started doing his paper negative sort of thing. They didn�t have to wait for enlargers or Photoshop!

 

To attempt to apply ethical constraints on what can be done with a lens and sensitive medium is pointless in the absence of some sort of context to which the situation can relate. I am not a proponent of �situation ethics� but definitely, the purpose to which the finished image is to be applied must in some way delineate the limits to which the tools are employed. Mortensen was (quite justifiably in my opinion) roasted by his contemporaries (Weston, et al) because he added pencil sketching to his productions. He justified it by saying he wasn�t recording an evert, he was making an illustration. Nevertheless I cast a jaundiced eye upon anyone trying to place taboos without relating them to a specific end result.

[michael_matsil]

As photography has become a more plastic art form, the definition of the limits

of integrity in manipulation has changed. The idea of a photograph as a

purely objective representation has long been dismissed in intellectual and

art circles. Steiglitz talked about his photographs as the "equivalent of what I

saw and felt." The operative word being, "felt." The beginning of

manipulation is when the artist begins to apply technique in order to show

more than what is seen but also how he or she feels concerning the subject.

It essentially starts with the decision to raise the camera to the eye and

includes any applied technique, at the photographer's disposal, from

exposure to presentation. With the digitization of photography these methods

have become dramatically more flexible and challenge150 years of

photographic process. Only in photography, among all the arts, is the creative

process considered to be mere manipulation. The age of digitization will

hopefully clarify our definition of our process and ourselves.

[charles_stobbs2]

George Eastman had it right when he said "You press the button, we do the rest". Dropping it in the mailbox is the only manipulation allowed.

[Sanford]

Nobody ever manipulated a print more than Ansel Adams, at least in the pre-digital era.

[andy_piper2]

1) as mentioned - just about anything you can do in Photoshop has been done, to one extent or another, by non-digital means over the years. PhotoShop makes some things a lot easier. Jerry Uelsmann glommed onto Photoshop like a shot - after spending 25 years, and up to 6 enlargers at once, producing his multi-exposures.

 

2) The materials we use for photography, from the lens and the original film, through imaging/scanning chips, to the paper we print on - is imperfect in its ability to record the world. Anything done to the image to correct for these imperfections - dodging/burning, etc. is acceptable.

 

3) Changing what was in front of the camera - such as cloning in people to increase the size of a crowd or balance the composition, or adding clouds that weren't there - is lying about reality. I would say that - ESPECIALLY if you are trying to persuade me of something, you had better not lie in your photographs. The lie will be revealed eventually, and once that happens, you will never have credibility again. (as Ronnie said: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice - shame on ME!")

 

Changing the image significantly to correct for one's failings as a photographer is like lying on a resume. You are not really what your portfolio purports you to be.

 

Reporters get fired for inventing quotes or interviewees - photographers get fired for faking pictures. A good thing, too.

 

4) I have rarely seen a manipulated image that was not - before and after the manipulation - anything better that boring wallpaper anyway. Including Uelsmann (although he is an exceptionally talented wallpaper designer).

 

If your picture depends so much on the clouds in the background that you can actually 'improve' it by adding different clouds (or sticking a sepia graduated filter over the lens, or whatever) - it's going to put me to sleep with or without the new clouds or sepia tint.

 

And if it's a compelling picture with a blank sky - well, adding phony clouds just phonies up a compelling picture.

[Spearhead]

<i> photographers get fired for faking pictures. A good thing, too. </i><p>

 

This is not true. Photojournalists may get fired for faking pictures. Most photographers fake pictures all the time, whether deliberately or not.<p>

 

 

<i>I have rarely seen a manipulated image that was not - before and after the manipulation - anything better that boring wallpaper anyway. </i><p>

 

Wow, quite a blanket statement.<p>

 

Maybe I've seen too much, but I look at work like such as Laughlin's (heavily manipulated) and see anything but wallpaper.

[dan flanders]

Come on, Andy! Your soapbox is showing. You are seeing the issue from a single subjective viewpoint and attempting to impose constraints for that specific situation upon other unrelated situations.

[ralph_barker]

I think it can be easily argued that everything photographic is manipulated - to one degree or another. Where one falls on the spectrum is the real question you're getting at, I believe, Vic. Photojournalists are, and (together with folks trying to sell equipment) should be held to a high standard, as has been said. But, even photojournalists manipulate "the truth" by selection of timing, framing, and context. Everything else is "art", and therefore interpretive and subjective.

 

Although I usually limit manipulation to what I'd do in the darkroom, would I add clouds to a nice landscape of the Mojave? Sure, why not. But, I'd probably stop short of adding a tornado, as that would infer an event that isn't likely to occur.

[._._z]

Who said there was a line to be drawn?

 

Reality is manipulated from the moment the photo is taken: the viewpoint, which

obscures some details and reveals selected others; the choice of film, which affects

whether the image is in b&w or color; the focal length of the lens, which distorts the

scene to varying degrees, and the use of flash. Further manipulation occurs with the

choice of developer and paper, and standard techniques of burning and dodging.

Color enhancements and blurring/sharpening were in the photographer's bag of

tricks decades before Photoshop existed. <p>

 

If you study the hitory of photography, the idea of a fully unmanipulated straight

print was not part of the mainstream for art or editorial or portrait photography.

Photojournalism has regularly cropped and rearranged and manipulated photos, with

varying degrees of outrage resulting (and none to customary, accepted amounts of

dodging/burning). <p>

 

<i> Does is make a difference if I move objects around in a picture to make it more

artistic? </i><p>

 

Does it matter to whom exactly, Vikram? Whose acceptance or recognition or approval

are you seeking?

[neil_baylis]

Someone always brings up Adams, as if he were the moral arbiter of photography.

The mere fact of his popularity doesn't make his actions right or

wrong.<br><br> Someone always

brings

up photojournalism, as if it were even possible for the PJ to present an unmediated

account of an event. The PJ examples don't show that manipulation is wrong - they

just show that, for a PJ, it is unwise, or imprudent. If you do it, you will lose

credibility, will get fired, etc.<br><br>Above, folks have said [whatever] "...is not

allowed"

etc. Well, "not allowed" by whom? Who gets to make these rules? I think these rules

are shorthand for "I don't like it". <br><br>Well, so you don't like it.<br><br>

If you want to connect with an audience that dislikes 'manipulation', then you would

be wise not to 'manipulate'. If you want to 'manipulate', then you would be wise not to

give undue weight to the opinions of those who dislike it.<br><br>

 

Neil

[james_elwing2]

I can't agree with any restrictions on image manipulation for creative photography as such. The art form itself is changing, and the golden age is yet to arrive. The old arguments about photography being or not being art were based upon the limited manipulation possible with a found image. Photoshop is a brush and a box of paints.

 

As far as a photograph being a reliable instrument of record for publication, or more importantly, being perceived as such; it's all over. Anybody with any sense is treating visual journalism with as much skepticism as journalistic text. The absence of a base negative plus ease of sophisticated alteration makes control within a publication impossible.

 

I reckon anyway; go ahead, knock me over

[andy_piper2]

Jeff: OK - photojournalists (and not all of them, if they don't get found out) get fired....

 

I did say 'rarely' - not 'never'. I think I still have a Clarence John Laughlin book somewhere - if so, I haven't felt drawn to look at it in 20 years. I guess I prefer Meatyard for 'southern gothic' imagery - and, yes, he manipulates, too. Mostly in-camera, if that makes any difference (perhaps not).

 

Harry: What constraints am I imposing? And on who?

 

Anyone is free to manipulate pictures as they choose - I am free to dismiss their work for doing so. I'm 1 out of 5 billion people - so it's unlikely that my dismissal alone will have any "constraining" effect on any photographer. Unless someone happens to read my post, and - of their own volition - decides to accept my argument and no longer manipulate pictures (a forlorn hope).

 

Soapbox? Vic asked for opinions - I gave 'em. What else would you have me do?

[kevin m.]

<i>"The idea of a photograph as a purely objective representation has long been dismissed in intellectual and art circles"</i>

<p>

Sure, but the public at large doesn't yet share that view. Most people still think a photograph represents 'reality.' At least to some degree. But as the use of photoshop and other computer manipulation increases, maybe the ridiculous notion that "seeing is believing" will become an idea whose time has past. Good thing, too. It's no more reliable than any other sense.

[lachaine]

I think this is something we all have to decide for ourselves. Personally, I think it's photography if it's done within the normal photographic process. After all, that's what the word was coined to mean. If a scene is substantially changed using computerized image editing, then it becomes debatatle as to whether the artwork is still a photograph. That doesn't mean it's not valid artwork though, but it becomes a cross between photography and illustration. If the person doing or buying the illustration is happy with that, fine.