Photo Ethics

On Friday, July 28th, Rick Thames, editor of the Charlotte Observer, announced photographer Patrick Schneider had been fired for digitally manipulating a photo. Thames wrote,

So, it is with much regret that I inform you that the color in a photograph in Thursday's editions was inappropriately altered before it was published. . . . In the original photo, the sky in the photo was brownish-gray. Enhanced with photo-editing software, the sky became a deep red and the sun took on a more distinct halo.

The Observer's photo policy states: 'No colors will be altered from the original scene photographed.' Schneider said he did not intend to mislead readers, only to restore the actual color of the sky. He said the color was lost when he underexposed the photo to offset the glare of the sun. (Link - Note: Schneider's photo is reproduced on the pdnOnline web site.)

This is not the first time Schneider has been involved in such a controversy. Daryl Lang, writing in a pdnOnline article entitled "Charlotte Observer Photographer Fired For Altering Colors," reports that in 2003 Schneider "was stripped of three state-level prizes when contest officials learned some of the photos he entered had been heavily adjusted."

Popphoto.com's article "Newspaper Photog Fired for Altering Photo -- Again" reprinted one of Schneider's "heavily adjusted" photos from 2003. In this case, the background had been darkened to make the subjects of the photo snap out more dramatically.

Shortly after Schneider's 2003 prizes were revoked, ZoneZero.com, an online photography magazine, published a thought-provoking editorial entitled "In defense of photographer Patrick Schneider." The editorial noted,

None of the three images which they dismissed from the awards . . . had the slightest possibility of being misinterpreted as to their content, by anyone. Between what the photographer had originally captured and what he delivered, the interpretations were absolutely identical as to the content, what changed was an esthetical value, and we agree with the photographer, for the benefit of the images.

In 2004 the National Press Photographers Association adopted a new Code of Ethics in an attempt to address many of the issues which face modern news photographers. Item number 6 speaks to this issue:

Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.

The core question becomes how much is too much? Even more sticky is the question of the "reality" of the image. The nature of an image is determined by a host of factors ranging from choice of lense to a multitude of camera settings--all things a professional photographer takes into account and uses. After the photo has been taken, photo editing is now as common as running a spell checker on a text.

Some cases are clear. Take, for example, these Newseum.org before and after photos of Stalin with a comrade who later "disappeared." Obviously, this is an example of photographic manipulation designed to mislead.
Other cases aren't so clear, and changes designed for aesthetic effect may well influence what a photo communicates. When O.J. Simpson was arrested following the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, Newsweek and Time both ran the same mug shot of O. J. Simpson. For Time's cover, however, the photo was darkened, generating an outcry and charges of racism. (Here is a comparison of the two covers.)

Photographers have always edited their images, although they may have worked with exposure and light in the darkroom instead of Photoshop. Indeed, a photograph, by its very nature, captures the photographer's vision. Photojournalists do have a special charge not to mislead with their photography, but it can also be argued that any single image can be inherently misleading, and it is a naive individual who thinks that a photographic image captures a "reality."

Related links:
"O.J.'s Last Run: A Tale of Two Covers"
"Photomanipulation" from Wikipedia
"Faking Images in Photojournalism"
"The Ethics of Digital Manipulation"
"Greg's Digital Portfolio" (Compelling examples of digital editing.)

Serendipity

Ah, serendipity -- finding something valuable while in the process of looking for something else. Serendipity is not exactly the right word for an experience I recently had while surfing the web, but it has the right spirit. I need a word to describe the act of stumbling across a web site which just so happens to explain or illuminate some problem or issue posed on another web site.

For example, I happened upon the article "Why are More Boys than Girls Being Born?" at Sixwise.com. It turns out that "Globally, there are about 105-107 boys born for every 100 girls." (Except in China, where the ratio is 116.9 boys for every 100 girls -- a trend which Chinese officials find alarming, for a variety of reasons.) The Sixwise.com article speculates on a number of factors which may affect this global ratio, such as older parents, fertility drugs, and some diseases. They also warn of an even more disturbing trend -- the number of male births per hundred seems to be decreasing .

After reading the Sixwise article, I happened upon the Naval Safety Center's Photo of the week. Suddenly, all became clear. From a behavioral perspective, it seems obvious why humans produce more males than females. It is also obvious why we really can't afford a decline in male births.

The Center's Archive of Previous Photos of the Week illustrates certain patterns of behavior which the folks at the Naval Safety Center find lacking in some way. Photos include:

• A Breathtaking Trust in Rope
• Balancing Act
• Stone Age Car Jack
• Heck of a Blind Spot

It is worth a visit to the Naval Safety Center's site to browse their archive of compelling photos.

(Note: If you don't see what why the good folks at the Safety Center get so bent out of shape about some of these practices, you may be what Dave Barry calls a "guy.")

Why Do Students Choose an English Major?

An essay from the 7 July 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education, shares the answers an English professor got when he asked his undergraduate students why they were English majors. No one said he or she wanted to make a lot of money or change the world; here's what they did say:

• Formative experiences with reading as a child: being read to by beloved parents and siblings, discovering the world of books and solitude at a young age.
• Feelings of alienation from one's peers in adolescence, turning to books as a form of escapism and as a search for a sympathetic connection to other people in other places and times.
• A love for books themselves, and libraries, as sites of memory and comfort.
• A "geeky" attraction to intricate alternate worlds such as those created by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and George Lucas.
• Contact with inspirational teachers who recognized and affirmed one's special gifts in reading and writing, often combined with negative experiences in other subjects like math and chemistry.
• A transference of spiritual longings -- perhaps cultivated in a strict religious upbringing -- toward more secular literary forms that inspired "transcendence."
• A fascination with history or science that is not grounded in a desire for rigorous data collection or strict interpretive methodologies.
• A desire for freedom and independence from authority figures; a love for the free play of ideas. English includes everything, and all approaches are welcome, they believe.
• A recognition of mortality combined with a desire to live fully, to have multiple lives through the mediation of literary works.
• A desire to express oneself through language and, in so doing, to make a bid for immortality.
• A love for the beauty of words and ideas, often expressed in a desire to read out loud and perform the text.
• An attraction to the cultural aura of being a creative artist, sometimes linked to aristocratic and bohemian notions of the good life.
• A desire for wisdom, an understanding of the big picture rather than the details that obsess specialists.

The essayist goes on to lament the students' loss of their romantic, idealistic motivations if they should choose to pursue English in graduate school, saying, "You have to spend so many years conforming [to the politics of English graduate school] that, by the time freedom presents itself, you don't know why you became an English major in the first place."

You can read the entire essay at "Goodbye, Mr. Keating."

What Books Are in Your Bathroom?

The New York Times' Sunday Book Review contains an essay by Henry Alford titled "Chamber Plots." According to Alford, one of the earlier references to books in the bathroom comes from in the mid-18th century from Lord Chesterfield, who wrote that he knew “a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets, in those moments.”

Imagine. All the Latin poets.

Of course, as Alford points out, here's what happened when Marat read in the bathroom:

The Death of Marat (1793), by Jacques-Louis David

Destination: Wyoming

Salon.com has added Wyoming to its Literary Guide to the World series. In the essay, Alexandra Fuller recommends Gretel Ehrlich, James Galvin, Mark Spragg, Annie Proulx, Geoffrey O'Gara, and Tim Sandlin. Letters in response to the article add other suggestions, too.

You can read the essay online at Salon.com by first watching a brief advertisement.

If You Want to Learn, Remove the iPod Buds

In truth, better advice would be put the iPod / instant messenger / TV / phone / chatroom / YouTube / Xbox down and walk away from them . . . because a new study has established they are a distraction while you are trying to learn new material.

A study published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences--"Modulation of Competing Memory Systems by Distraction"--explains that we have two means of learning: declarative memory and habit learning. Habit learning is what happens when you dial a phone number 20 times and then suddenly have it memorized and can punch it in without thinking. Declarative memory is a more conscious form of learning--as if you looked up a phone number once, determined to memorize it, and then were able to recall it when you needed. As it turns out, we can recall and use the things we learn through declarative memory with much greater flexibility than the facts we learn through habit learning.

The study in PNAS finds that distractions interfere with declarative memory. A news story on the study explains it this way,

The problem, Poldrack [the lead investigator] said, is that the two types of learning seem to be competing with each other, and when someone is distracted, habit learning seems to take over from declarative learning.

"We have to multitask in today's world, but you have to be aware of this," he said. "When a kid is trying to learn new concepts, new information, distraction is going to be bad, it's going to impair their ability to learn."

It turns out your parents were right: turn off the TV and concentrate on your homework.

---

Above photo: Silence, please, a Flickr photo originally uploaded by .Lara.

"Sex isn't like it used to be . . ."

Mickey Spillane, the writer who wrote unprecedented sex and violence into American popular fiction, died of cancer at age 88 on July 17th.

When I, the Jury appeared in print in July 1947, it appalled critics:

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Anthony Boucher deplored the book's "vicious . . . glorification of force, cruelty, and extra-legal methods." The Chicago Sun dismissed it as "shabby and rather nasty," while the Saturday Review of Literature critic . . . remarked on its "lurid action, lurid characters, lurid writing, lurid plot, lurid finish." --AmericanHeritage.com

Ironically, Spillane apparently was a kind-hearted, mild-spoken, generous, devout man--completely unlike his famously sadistic protagonist Mike Hammer. Spillane called himself a writer instead of an author, saying that he only wrote sex-and-violence because sex-and-violence paid the bills: "This is an income-generating job . . .. Fame was never anything to me unless it afforded me a good livelihood" (CNN.com).

A shrewd judge of audience, Spillane figured that all the GIs from World War II could stand a little sex and they'd certainly already seen the violence. He was right. According to a 1965 tally, Spillane had "seven of America's twenty best-selling fiction books of the twentieth century. In the crime-and-suspense category, he monopolized the top seven spots" (AmericanHeritage.com). by 1980, he still held "seven of the top 15 all-time bestselling fiction titles in America" (The Guardian). And when all the shouting was over, "his name appeared on seven of the 20th century's 25 bestselling fiction titles" (Telegraph.co.uk).

Nonetheless, the trend he started had moved beyond his expectations. When asked about the Hannibal Lecter books in a Crime Time interview, Spillane said, ". . . violence isn't like it used to be. Sex isn't like it used to be either . . .."

Obituaries:

• Mickey Spillane
  
• Obituaries: Mickey Spillane
  
• Mike Hammer Creator Spillane Dies
• Mystery Writer Mickey Spillane Dies at 88

Rembrandt's 400th

Rembrandt van Rijn was born 15 July 1606 in Weddesteeg (outside the walls of Leiden) near the Rhine River in the Netherlands. As NPR says, "The Dutch master's canvases told stories from history and the Bible, and he was the leading portrait painter of his day."

One aspect of his work that remains inspirational is his honesty. As Susan Stamberg reports, "His paint brush was pitiless" when it came to the self-portraits he created throughout his life. (Above, an etching before he was 25.)

• Rembrandt's Unsparing Eye, NPR report
• Rembrandt 400
  
• Self-portraits, in chronological order
• Rembrandt-Caravaggio Exhibit, Van Gogh Museum (Click on the heading for the online comparison between the two artists)
  
• Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits, National Gallery of Art
• The Masterpieces Special, Rijksmuseum
  

Teaching in South Korea

The eagle has landed!

Former Northwest College English instructor Loren Hutchins has landed in South Korea to start his new job. Along with the new job, he's started a new blog--Teaching in South Korea--through which he'll be sharing his adventures with the rest of us.

Check it out--we will be!

This Is So Not Good Writing

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean. --Jim Guigli, winner

Yes! San Jose State University has announced the winners of the 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. As you can see from the winning entry above, the judges at SJSU have not changed their standards one iota from past years.

As you may remember from a previous post, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest honors the memory of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a 19th c. British writer. But was he so horrible? If we can measure one's greatness by relative immortality, then Bulwer-Lytton is a success, since it was he who coined enduring cliches such as "the pen is mightier than the sword," "the great unwashed," and "pursuit of the almighty dollar." Furthermore, Bulwer-Lytton's most famous opening sentence--It was a dark and stormy night . . . --achieved gilded immortality as the opening sentence of Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Medal novel A Wrinkle in Time.

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?" --Stuart Vasepuru, runner-up