Teaching The Camera To See My Skin: Navigating photography’s inherited bias against dark skin.

[starvy]

<p>An interesting blog about skin colour and film/digital tones<br>

<a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/syreetamcfadden/teaching-the-camera-to-see-my-skin">http://www.buzzfeed.com/syreetamcfadden/teaching-the-camera-to-see-my-skin</a></p>

[SCL]

<p>Quite interesting. I remember when I first got into digital, encountering realistic coloration skin tone issues with both my caucasian and my Afro-American family members. One of the things I continue to have to tweak is an occasional bluish skin tint depending on the depth of the dark skin coloration on some family and the quality of light reflecting off the skin. I'm pretty much of a B&W shooter these days, which of course makes the issue moot. Thanks for the link...I'll pass it along to my daughter.</p>

[James G. Dainis]

Very interesting and thought provoking.

[sarah_fox]

<p>Very interesting article! As a minority myself (not a racial one), and as someone who raised two young men who are themselves darker-skinned racial minorities, I have long been attuned to how minorities are portrayed in the media, how they are photographed, etc. I have observed that it is very easy (even for myself) to perceive a person or industry as biased, even bigoted, when that might not be the case. I think there might be some element of that here.</p>

<p>I am reminded of a recent controversy that has caused me to re-evaluate how I program my web pages. Without belaboring the politics of the situation, it suffices to say I have come to question whether I should support Internet Explorer to the extent I do, as though it is a gold standard, and not support Firefox more deliberately (as it is a far better browser). The ONLY reason I have supported Internet Explorer to the extent I have, is that it was once unquestionably the dominant browser. My decisions about functionality and compatibility were made with an eye towards that fact. Now that Firefox now almost equals IE in market share, I'm going to be writing more (mostly, in fact) for compatibility with Firefox. This has absolutely nothing to do with any biases I might have towards or against Mozilla or Microsoft. It's more that I want my web pages to look as good as possible to the largest number of people. Period.</p>

<p>And then I read here about how film media have been biased against people of color. I have to believe that the bottom line in the formulations of emulsions was making money, and that meant having pictures look as good as possible for the greatest number of paying customers. I don't see racism in that. I see only commercialism.</p>

<p>What this article ignores is that emulsions might be somewhat "biased" against extremely fair-skinned people as well. I think I can speak with some degree of authority that both my ex (dark-skinned) and I (light skinned) are hard to photograph as well as our children (both of them falling within a more photogenic mid-range). (It was really fun trying to squeeze all of our skin tones into the same photograph!) I would say that if anything, Kodak's "racism" would have favored the Latino population over all -- as Kodak's founder, Jorge Eastmano would have wanted.</p>

<p>But I do admit that dark skinned people are still harder to photograph well than light skinned people -- even in the digital age. Part of the problem now, as always, has been that people seem to prefer higher contrast photographs, and the manufacturers have therefore sold higher-contrast products in their effort to please (and sell). None of this is a racist thing. People just seem to like contrast because... they do. Fair-skinned people, on the light end of the spectrum, are no harder to expose with high contrast media. However, dark-skinned people easily get consumed in the shadows, unless the decision is made to blow out highlights or to minimize the highlights in the scene (reducing its contrast).</p>

<p>It would be easy to blame my racist Gossen light meter for not having a special "blow-out-the-highlights-to-lift-shadows-enough-to-expose-dark-skinned-people-well" indicator, or to blame any of my racist digital cameras for not having a "dark-skinned-people" auto exposure mode, but I think that strains at reality. I think it's up to us as photographers to know how to expose for the variety of subjects that might come before our lens.</p>

[sarah_fox]

<p><img src="http://www.graphic-fusion.com/equalitymarch0016.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="467" /></p>

<p>And please tell me, in this photograph, which race (African American or Caucasian) seems better exposed? The reason? It was the choice of the photographer to expose optimally for the main subject, who is African American -- not that the exposure is bad for the Caucasian subjects. (Please note the blown-out background. I guess I failed the ETTR challenge, but I don't really care.)</p>

[Spearhead]

<p>Shirley cards have always served as proof that the industry chose to normalize on white skin. It's been talked about for years. All the explanations just above do nothing to change that fact. And, like the author of the article points out and I have noticed, face recognition is based around light-skinned faces. There isn't even an option to shift the color bias.</p>

<p>I shoot dark-skinned people between 30% and 70% of the time, the latter number when I shoot at work. I'm fairly used to exposing properly based on skin color but occasionally, in a hurry, let the camera do its thing and it doesn't do it right a lot of the time.</p>

<p>This is an example, this had pretty intense continuous lighting.</p>

 

<center><img src="http://spirer.com/images/beachset2.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="467" /></center>

[User_6502147]

<p>Well, I agree to certain point. Many film people prefer Fuji for looking more "real" vs Kodak's. No doubt Kodak reacted to cinematographers that abandoned Kodak stock....and they created film emulsion that had more latitude (like 5247 mot pict + others)....tho it was still lacking.</p>

<p>Many of us have seen <em>Coming to America</em> with Eddie Murphy, and perhaps this was was not the exact turning point, but it did create some serious issues to expose the film properly. Woody Omens, who set up the lighting (DP), was quite sensitive to the issue and with the help of the lab, he was able to pull this off better than was done previously. Anyway, the 18% card is only a standard....one can deviate from it.</p>

<p>I think the increased possibilities of digital processing + the increased DR pretty much of diminishes her article. Yet, on the flip side, the auto-functions (presets) of the camera may be "color blind", but I still get much more nuance by using manual settings.</p>

<p>Les</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Sarah: "I have observed that it is very easy (even for myself) to perceive a person or industry as biased, even bigoted, when that might not be the case."</p>

<p>I don't think exclusion has to be consciously intended for 'it' to be the case<em> in its exclusionary effects.</em> So I just acknowledge that there is a bias toward the majority population and their ability to pay in various commercial relationships. At its moral best it is an unconscious, mechanized, impersonal exclusionary bias toward the dominant culture. At its worst, it's something else. Also, as soon as we speak to commercialism we are also speaking to 'ability to pay' and that's where it get's historically interesting, so to speak.</p>

[James G. Dainis]

I guess it's sort of the same thing with <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_adhidavikz0/TUeTIhcrF9I/AAAAAAAAABU/M9SX3_Ih3JQ/s320/band+aid.jpg"><U>flesh colored band-aids</U></a>

[randrew1]

<p>Color film in the 70s did have a racial bias. It was more from neglect than intentional bias. Even when perfectly processed and carefully printed, black flesh was too red. There was a lot of work in the 1990s to improve overall color accuracy and improving flesh reproduction of all varieties was part of this. Portra film was and is very good at reproducing all varieties of flesh tones. </p>

[starshooter]

<p>Some things happen because firms choose a path they think will work for most people. Other things happen because of racial or other bias. And then their is people being ethnocentric. Photography has no inherent bias against dark skin. Photography doesn't have a clue. What people do with photography is a different matter.<br>

At one time I took candid photographs of film and TV stars, for instance at movie premieres. (The stars had a valid ticket to the event, and so did I). One technical problem was in taking color photos of famed actor Sidney Poitier (whose skin is very black) and his Caucasian wife (whose skin is very white). If they were standing together his face would be underexposed or hers would be overexposed.<br>

But I had a bigger problem with Lucille Ball. She wore some kind of extremely white makeup and using the regular cameras settings for most people. her face would be very overexposed. Standing next to her last husband, who had a golf course tan, she would be overexposed or he would be underexposed. So it is not just race.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Wayne - "Photography doesn't have a clue."</p>

<p>Right, but commerce does and film changed to meet a need for better skin reproduction according to various comments above. Had whites been in the minority and film formulated to reproduce for darker skin colors, nothing would have been done to make the white minority less washed out until we as a white minority got enough money for commerce to care. (Sorry to imply that commerce 'cares', I didn't mean 'care' like they actually do care about anything other than money in commerce). For example, why make a dark skinned Barbie doll?</p>

<p>The only reasonable answer seems to me to be for money and sure, it's nothing personal though that fact doesn't mean that non-white people don't have an inherent right to take things like that personally; to look at a white flesh colored bandaids as ethnocentric, to look at flesh colored crayons as ethnocentric, to look at how film is formulated as ethnocentric: because those examples are of things ethnocentric and there are plenty more examples. The resulting social environment isn't so much about 'people' being ethnocentric as it is about culture being ethnocentric in just about everything that a culture does. And if you want to see touchy and taking things personal, just talk to anyone in the dominant culture about issues of race and you'll see defensive touchiness for sure.</p>

<p> </p>

[starshooter]

<p>I am a Wend, a person whose ethnic roots are in Asia. Do you have any clue at all about my ancestors or am I in some lump in your mind with others that have nothing in common with my people? You seem quite touchy and defensive.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>No I don't have a clue about your ancestry and yes unless someone has a non European sounding name associated with their post I assume they are of European ancestry and make a lump. That is what I do. Because I'm in the dominant group and that is how we mostly are, we don't 'see' ethnicity, are for the most part are oblivious to how our ethnicity impacts others. That's what I am. Then, we get told, such as you just told me, we get touchy and defensive. Yes, that's what is going on. And I can say that more credibly, I can talk about ethnicity and race with more authority since that authoritative privilege is given to me by my culture just by the fact of my being of the ethnicity of the dominant group. If I say and acknowledge such things, I'm taken more seriously than if someone not in the dominant group says the same thing, because the way our minds work is to see anyone with a problem with us as having a personal problem with us and they are the one's who, presumably, should get over it. Not good, but that is the way it is and I would like that to change in my culture, and I would like to change. And my experience of trying to speak to people and hear them acknowledge it about our culture and about themselves is like the experience of a dentist trying to pull a tooth from a patient who has lock jaw.</p>

<p>That being said, where exactly did I get your meanings wrong in addressing some of them, and others, in my post?</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>I'm curious. Digital shots like positive film has a lower DR and more contrast naturally. Can anyone who shot Kodak Portra, which is negative film of neutral balance, tell us anything about how it handles different skin tones? </p>

<p> </p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Well, there is dark skin, and then there is dark skin, and what works for <a href="/photo/11034737"><em><strong>one person's skin</strong> </em></a>surely will not always work for <a href="/photo/11312971"><strong><em>another's.</em></strong></a><br>

<strong><em> </em></strong><br>

--Lannie<strong><em><br /></em></strong></p>

[User_276104]

<p>If this was about landscape photography and/or Fuji Velvia, someone would have already said that photography is not about re-creating reality.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>I shoot Velvia and it's terrible generally for skin color while I enjoy its saturation for landscapes. As for reality, the human brain is higher selective regarding skin color. It notices immediately when the tones, saturation, hues are off because we look at people's skin all the time. Landscape color can vary a lot naturally so our eye and brain allow greater variances for what it would consider "normal".</p>

[pmind]

<p>Does anyone else have Steve McCurry's <em>Portraits</em>? I'm pretty sure everything in that book was shot on Kodachrome.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Ah, Kodachrome. I remember it well. Everything went well with it. Here's scan I did of 45 year old Kodachromes my in-laws took back then. Of course I adjusted colors in post because the scans always need it. But still. Just amazing how that film holds up. It was just laying around in a box all those years.</p>

<p>https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/sets/72157626911395064/</p>