[Open Carry]

www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-ednote_blurb.blurb (http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-ednote_blurb.blurb)

On Monday, March 31, the Los Angeles Times published a front-page photograph that had been altered in violation of Times policy.

The primary subject of the photo was a British soldier directing Iraqi civilians to take cover from Iraqi fire on the outskirts of Basra. After publication, it was noticed that several civilians in the background appear twice. The photographer, Brian Walski, reached by telephone in southern Iraq, acknowledged that he had used his computer to combine elements of two photographs, taken moments apart, in order to improve the composition.

Times policy forbids altering the content of news photographs. Because of the violation, Walski, a Times photographer since 1998, has been dismissed from the staff. The altered photo, along with the two photos that were used to produce it, are below:

[Open Carry]

Real photo

http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=242149

[Open Carry]

Real photo

http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=242150

[Open Carry]

Phony photo

http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?s=&postid=242151

[FJC]

My guess is that he wanted to use img2 (nice shot of concerned father with child), but the soldiers weapon appears in that picture to be pointing straight at the kids head...

just my guess as to what his motivation was to alter it. I fully agree that it shouldn't be altered, at least not without a prominent statement that it was so done.

[Wayne D]

OK, I can argue both sides of this. I understand a policy against altering photos. But on the other hand, he really didn't change the content so what's the harm? I think he just liked the way the soldier looked in one photo but liked the man carrying the kid in the other photo and just put them together.

[cratz2]

I think altering the content of any picture should be against every newspaper, magazine and TV stations policy. Freshened up, contrast changed, lighter... all fine. combining two pictures to make it look like something is happening that is no happening for sensational reporting should be illegal. Outside the realm of free speech in my opinion.

Actually, they all look hacked up to me.

[bogie]

Hmpff... Just when I was going to let the world know about my photos of how the Greys abducted Elvis...

Hmpff...

[BOBE]

Maybe all the hastle about the guy in black pointing his gun at the kid from cuba caused the photographer to create a Politically Correct version.:banghead:

[Chipperman]

IMO, the photo is fine for his portfolio, or to be published in a photo book, but NOT for NEWS.

As was said above, any alteration however minor, is falsifying how things really happened.

[Justin]

OK, I can argue both sides of this. I understand a policy against altering photos. But on the other hand, he really didn't change the content so what's the harm? The harm lies in the precedent that would result from allowing doctored photographs. Sure, this one's pretty inocuous, but five years down the line it might be considered completely ok to doctor a pic in any way that the photog wants too.

I agree that actions that basically boil down to color correction techniques are fine, though.

[RustyHammer]

..... yet another case if inbred reporters. :uhoh: :rolleyes: :eek: :uhoh: :rolleyes:

[DMK]

any alteration however minor, is falsifying how things really happened. That's exactly it. It's no different than making up events or situations that never happened.

[Jim March]

Even lighting changes are suspect.

Anybody recall when two of the major weekly news magazines (Time and one other) printed the same jail booking photo of OJ in the same week?

It was dead obvious that one had run the photo fairly, but the other did a tinting and edge-darkening process that added up to making OJ look much more "gloomy" and "nefarious" than the other.

That incident caused a lot of reforms throughout the biz.

[Taekwondog]

I wonder why networks do not follow the same thread.......

Not that they fake pictures, but clearly they have "staged" photo ops.....The dragging down of Hussien's statue was one, so was a short clip showing marines "clearing" a building, with reporters in tow.

In reality the palace had already been cleared (as was evident by a U.S. Soldier lounging on a nearby sofa who wasn't aware that a "photo op" was going on. The reporter stated that he was filming troops as they made their way through a building making sure it was clear.

It WAS clear, and they knew it. So, since it was a re-enactment and not the act itself, wouldn't a disclaimer have been appropriate?

[Chipperman]

YES.

The problem with our hi-tech media is that it's too tempting and too easy now to change things. A good person with Photoshop can make an event that never happened. It could start with lighting and exposure changes, but where do you draw the line between improving the image vs altering history?

The Elian Gonzalez event was mentioned earlier. Imagine if we found out tomorrow that the famous pic of the gun pointed in his face was Photoshopped.

There would be some serious fallout from that.

[Yohan]

http://www.usacommunications.com/supp/locked.gif
Off Topic? :uhoh:

[Justin]

More at home in Legal and Political actually...

[Justin]

Even lighting changes are suspect.

Anybody recall when two of the major weekly news magazines (Time and one other) printed the same jail booking photo of OJ in the same week?Jim- I'd say that falls more under falsifying an image. Color correction is generally done to the whole image. Common color correction techiques would be adjusting the contrast, white balance, or color saturation. Again, this would have to be (at least to my mind) applied to the whole image, and not just parts of it selectively.

As an example- I once shot a bunch of digital video inside of a powerplant for a school project. The interior was lit with arc-sodium lights, though there was a fair amount of light coming from other sources. To the human eye, the lighting looked slightly orangish.
When we looked at the video, it looked like it'd been shot through a highly saturated orange filter. The colors picked up by the human eye and a camera lens can sometimes be vastly different.

[BOBE]

Actually this is nothing new. Gen. Macarther (sp) had several pictures taken of him returning to the Phillipines before he approved the one to go to Movietone News in WW2.

[Jim March]

Makes sense. My real point is that "emotional tone" can be affected with lighting changes that doesn't otherwise alter the composition the way the guy did in Iraq (re: the pics that started this thread).

[Standing Wolf]

The Los Angeles Times is just another leftist extremist propaganda organization.