Chapter 8: Photo ethic and Photo fiction

Photo Ethic (for journalism)

Photo ethic is about the ethical aspect from the original scenery, to a photograph, and then to the public.

It is mainly based on the intention of producing a photograph to the public. Photographer, publisher, are responsible for not misleading the public.

Photographer could cheat or reinterpret the content from the original scenery in to a picture by simply controlling the way he compose a picture. In addition, the way he frames and the way he angles a picture could eliminate important information that eventually re-content the actual reality.

Moreover, simply using computer editing software, photographers, or magazine/newspaper editors could re-content a picture and mislead the viewers, for instance, cropping, adding and removing elements in a picture, montaging, etc. Nonetheless, anything is possible to fake a picture by using computer, you name it.

However, there are few ways to avoid violating the ethical aspect in journalism.

1. Burning and dodging: lighten or darken part of the image to preserve the details.
2. Brightness and contrast: lighten and darken or contrast a photo to improve reproduction.
3. Pixels duplication/Touch Up/pixels replacement: correcting technical defects in a photo by cloning pixels to cover dust spots or erase ‘line hits’, which are usually created during shooting when the lens is not clean.
   
4. Minor color corrections: to correct color shift and improve reproduction quality without altering the basic reality of a photograph.
5. Cropping: resizing or cropping the border of a photograph without eliminating any subjects or elements that can mislead the viewer.

**Photojournalism vs Documentary photography

• both arrive at a truth,
• for photojournalist
  
• the intention is to present the news 'objectively'.
• immediate and necessarily contemporaneous with events.
• Documentary photography
• reflective and most often separated from actual events by enough time that it is no longer newsworthy.
• documenting events
• May convey or suggest messages that reflexes the society, civilization, culture, or the world.
  
• Both must carry implications of authenticity, and are ethical.

Journalistic Photography

• picture is news worthy
• it's very objective, like a snap shot of the actual event with no intention of showing any hidden message or context.
  

Documentary Photography

• Picture content messages or suggestion that usually responds or reflects social aspects or humanities.
• the intention is to document or record an event or an issue.
  
• outdated Journalistic photographs can be considered as a documentary photograph.

Photo fiction
Pictures that are believed to be fictional: any altered picture/ fake or setup photo content / art photography

In photo ethic, as long as the content in the picture is commonly recognized as fictional or fake, personal use, print ads, and non journalistic, it does not relates to photo ethic concerns. For example

1. when you see beautiful models in a magazine like fashion or glamor photos, it is commonly known that these pictures are cosmetically touched up. Thus, public can accept and not being fooled by those pictures in magazine covers or websites.
2. Art photography, it's meant to be fictional, or abstract, thus, it is acceptable to have alterations and modifications.
   
3. Photographs for wedding, personal portraits, are also acceptable to have cosmetic touch ups since is rather for personal use.
   
4. for pictures that look impossible in reality or obviously montaged, especially print ads or magazines, are also publicly recognized as photo fiction