[Lightstalkers] Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:04:36 +0000

I see here in Mexico that a lot of photographers posing their images and says that are photojournalism or documentary, That´s is valid? I really don´t think so. Or maybe they are a new kind of photojournalists?

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:00:37 +0000

maybe the term photojournalism is being used, but perhaps the people you talk about are doing portraits. with out seeing the produced images it is hard to comment further. j.

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:43:59 +0000

I believe there is such a thing as a "documentary portrait", which is not about an unfolding event - it's about a person and a personality and maybe a situation. In this case I believe it permissable to move a distracting object a little to one side, ask someone to move over HERE, look over THERE, etc. So let's say you are shooting in a refugee camp. Handing a random woman a random child and taking a staged "mother and child" shot is wrong. Asking a mother to move a little closer to the light by the tentflap, to remove the shawl from her baby's head so its face can be seen ... I don't think that's wrong. I'd be interested to hear dissenting opinions though. Tobie

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:04:26 +0000

No such thing as an "action portrait" as far as I'm concerned. Either, you've got a portrait, where everything is controlled or can be controlled/posed/moved/etc., and it's got to look clearly like a portrait. Or, you've got a documentary shot, which cannot be altered either in photoshop or as you're shooting. Any posing during documentary shooting makes the photo a fake, in my mind. Hard to judge what those guys in Mexico are doing without seeing the pictures, of course. While covering news for newspapers in the US, though, I will say that I've seen some tv crews setting things up ("Hey, man, can you do that again?"). That's their ballgame, though, and when I see it happening, I go shoot something else.

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:53:21 +0000

they'll always find a new label for whatever happens to be flavour of the month

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:23:35 +0000

There is a difference between setting up a shot intentionally to fool someone about a news/historic event and what happens when you become part of the moment..

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:34:45 +0000

I understand so well when you make portraits, but if you making all kind of photographs, including portraits, can you saying that also are photojournalism? Imagine migration essays when you posing people to have better conditions of light? I can see people here who see images and says to the people: "can you put your hand again like that?". I really don´t considered photojournalism.

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:29:49 +0000

Posing is what we humans are good at....................walking by looking at our reflections, a camera comes out and we change shoot and kill harder as soldiers, show off our peacock feathers, As photographers we select what we photograph ........... we move,search for the light,pose the action, we make up stuff in our heads ................. dream on photojournalists, it's all part of a performance

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:22:11 +0000

It's very easy to get all precious about this. As Imants says above, by the very act of composing and framing a scene in a camera viewfinder then we are selecting a view. It's been discussed endlessly on here before. Choose not to frame something on the edge of a scene and that makes your photograph a lie? It's not cameras that lie, but the people behind them. They just record whatever they are pointed at. So any photo is subjective and dependent on the whim of the person pressing the shutter and framing the shot. I'm not advocating doctoring news photos in photoshop as several people have in the past,(and suffered the consequences). But asking the subject of a portrait photo to move into better light? I don't see a problem with that if the photographer uses their common sense and judges the situation properly. In some situations that clearly wouldn't be appropriate, in others then no problem. Want to be a puritan photographer? Take everything on a wide hasselblad X-pan camera. Don't adjust anything in photoshop whatsoever. If a Picture Editor suggests framing a shot a certain way, tell them no way-if they want to put a certain slant on a photo then they should go and shoot it that way themselves. Make sure you shoot everything at f16 in case someone accuses you of applying selective focus to blur something out in the background. I could go on.....

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:32:53 +0000

wasn't it matthew brady who was one of the first war photographers? shots of the american civil war, rows of bodies on hills, glass plates, all that? well i've always been told he arranged those bodies. actually, half the time his associate photographers shot that stuff anyway, come to think of it.

i always use that in class discussions about photoshopping images. anyone with half a brain looks at any shot today and questions if it's been photoshopped. we look at brady and assume it's "real". the question is, did his viewers then assume the photos had been posed? at that point in history, every photograph was deliberate and arranged, so, why not the bodies?

my point being, at no point in history should we ever "trust" a photograph to be "real", and now it's just more obviously susceptible to manipulation.

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:59:12 +0000

http://australianscreen.com.au/titles/frank-hurley/clip2/ ........................ http://www.theage.com.au/news/tv--radio/history-lens-itself/2005/07/26/1122143850088.html

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:21:58 +0000

(shouldn't trust australians, either...)

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:35:08 +0000

amazing how this keeps coming up. photographers are no more ethical or honest than the population at large, which i guess means in practice, mostly honest, some relativists, and a few really bad apples. it's pretty implicit to anyone working in a Western society's free press that you're supposed to record things as you see them and not set anything up. For photographers from societies where media was always an instrument of propaganda, this might not be so obvious, since in those cases, publication is not to reveal "truth" but rather a specific point of view. And even in a democracy, many practitioners are very competitive, or cynical, both of which might degrade their ethical standards. but i still think, despite all this, that in the absence of knowledge to the contrary, we have a right to assume that most of what we see is essentially honest. Not that we should be surprised when it's not, but most of the time it should be straight.

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:21:04 +0000

In the Los Angeles area I see a lot of TV crews re-enact things if they missed it.

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:02:52 +0000

Here in Mexico are "photojournalists" who are inside a prison and see a image and say "please, can you hold your hand like that in your face?"; and presenting like a photojournalist essay. If you´re making a work about the worship to the death here in Mexico, and you posing a guy with a gun and a image of a dressed skull, seeing you directly to the camera, are photojournalism? Or simply, if you copy a classic image and presenting like "own" inside a photojournalist work, and says "sorry, i don´t know that work", are really saying the truth? Im with Alan, i believe that when we make photojournalism is a tool that we have to express the truth, but, here in Mexico, the most dangerous country to make journalism, that my friends, are far from the truth talking about photo.

Re: Are valid posing in photojournalism?

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:04:36 +0000

Sorry Richard, also here re-enact and worse, making representations of "news", only to shows to the audience that any tv company have "exclusive information".