PS versus Changing the Angle

Choose another shack Tobie !!
Seriously though-any photographer manipulates the image just by framing that shack in the viewfinder.
What you leave in-what you leave out. Personally I would never photoshop out the Sat dish-it’s there and taking it out is really a step too far. Either leave it in,(some of the poorest households I’ve photographed in the UK often have Sat dishes and huge TV’s !!), or ‘hide’ it behind somebody or something. That sat dish is still there-just hidden from view.
It’s an interesting issue. Lets face it, anything can be made to look good or bad depending on how you photograph or view it.

it depends on why and for what you are taking the photo but assuming its journalism.

no device replicates reality 100%, we all makes choices but hopefully we are honest about those choices and don’t pretend things are what they aren’t. if one were doing a story about shacks and chose to avoid shooting the dish i would query their motives, the dish is an important element of shack life. if aesthetics are more important then the truth i would suggest they get out of journalism. yes there are times when looking through the viewfinder i try and avoid some building or obstruction being in the frame but not if it is essential to the scene. that is to say that if one went out looking for shacks and found a shack with a dish they should shoot it, they are not making photos they planned rather they are taking photos of reality and the shack has a dish.

that aside the problem with photoshoping things in/out is where does one draw the line? if it is ok to remove an object then why take the photo at all? why not just go find a photo of a shack and crop it out and stick it into a background of your choice from some other photo. a strict no photoshopping rule makes peoples lives simpler as it removes the temptation, or should do.

Tobie, The cases are two:

1. You have no story until you change the shack.

2. Tell a story about how even people without a dime that live in a shack inside a slum can afford (or find somewhere) a satellite dish and are tv dependent (a proof that tv is used to control masses, if that statement needs any proof at all).

You gotta report reality and you are the one that’s telling the story.

Ciao,
Alessandro

You know Alessandro, you put that reply about TV dependency so much more eloquently than me !!
Funky is right too-if it’s for some commercial uses then almost anything goes I reckon-but even so I would make sure the occupants of the shack sign a release for themselves AND get a property release so there is no comeback for digitally removing their pride and joy.

Is picturesque the appropriate term here ?

This is a purely hypothetical case, Daniel. If the term “picturesque” paired with “shack” offends you (and I can see that it might) feel free to substitute “rustic cottage”. :)

Tobie

Does this mean the rustic cottage with a satellite dish on the roof doesn’t exist at all then Tobie?
Damn, that’s disappointing!
Feel free to come and photograph my rustic cottage anytime-sadly I’m too mean to get a satellite dish or cable TV.
I don’t mind if you photoshop one on there so long as it’s not for editorial use !

Why remove the dish at all? This is the 21st century, not the 12th. In the 21st century, some desperately poor people can afford satellite television. That is reality. Removing the dish just because it doesn’t coincide with someone’s idea of what poor people ought to own is an imposition of their preconceptions on someone else’s life.

“It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana. We too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little used to dine without meat as they now are to eat rye bread; that sanitary police and medical discoveries may have added several more years to the average length of human life; that numerous comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty working man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert that the increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited the few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendour of the rich.”—Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England

We talking about photography’s stupid balls again?

“the carpenter at Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day”
Thats it-I’m switching professions. Today I earnt NO shillings !!
Anyone out there want a table and chairs? I do a nice line in furnishing rustic shacks too.

Yeah John the same applies in South Africa … in the Townships there are many a tin-and-cardboard shack with a spanking new lounge suite and BIG TV set to be seen.

Daniel, probaqbly not … but as this is a hypothetical case, feel free to substitute “picturesque rustic cottage on a stormy coast” for “shack in a slum”.

Tobie

Never leave the house with preconceived notions as to what the story is. The story changes, change with it.

Thanks for the balls Stupid.

So now the conversation has veered to whether the satellite dish should be included or not. So far, the most cogent argument referred to the “slippery slope”, which I think we are all aware of. So forget about the satellite dish for a minute. Let’s say it’s something completely incongruous that would never be in that spot, but today happens to be and therefore spoils the only opportunity I have of taking the shot? Let’s say it’s for an editorial piece – not news, not commercial.

So my question stands – “What is the difference between excluding an unwanted element from a picture by framing or changing your angle, versus removing it in PhotoShop?”
Keep ‘em coming, this is interesting. :)

Tobie

Hi Bignose. I would take the picture with the satelite dish on the roof. Poor people have direct tv, how i don’t know. If they get permission i will do too some pix inside the house and how they live, and if you have time i will do other daily life pictures of them. If they a have field of football in the roof or whatever i would take the picture as it is. I think is a good idea put lights to show more some sides or tune contrast or (de)saturation to get more impact, you know, this image can run side by side to some publicity with a bolt picture. So i want capture the atention of the people. What is interesting for me for discussion is what happen after with the media. For example, the editor puts the thumbs down to the story because is not what they imagine before, ignore the information of the images we have done. The editorial runs the story but change the meaning of the story, if the poor people have satelite they are fine, don’t need some improvements in the way of their life. What the media do with the information and how we run to do the same things to get published and sell our photos because is a hot spot for the big media. This is the part that worry more to me.

Hi Tobie,

I’ll offer my opinion as a non-photojournalist. If the image is for news – not editorial – work, then I say you need to either include the sat dish or use a different shack (or rustic cottage).

I guess I simplify it down to this: if it is a news image, has the photographer done everything within their control to not distort the situation. For a news image, in my mind it’s the same whether you PS the dish out, or take a shot from an angle where the dish is obscured: they are both “wrong”, in that you as the reporter know the dish is there, and you are consciously (actively?) removing it from the image you are presenting as news.

Another way I thought of it is like this. If I saw the image without the sat dish…and then discovered that it existed, and that the PJ actively, purposefully “removed” it (by whatever mechanism), I would feel “tricked”. Not good for news reportage.

Completely different feeling for me if it’s for editorial or social commentary…although, in that situation, the more interesting story might be the image including the dish. In that situation, I wouldn’t feel the same for some reason…I’d probably say to myself “well, it was very “photogenic” cottage that represented the editorial commentary very well with the exception of the dish, so it was removed…no big deal”.

Boiled down, it’s the dfifference in the feelign when reading the editorial page versus the rest of the paper. Outside the editorial page, I expect a certain neutrality and completeness.

Andy

Why do we begrudge slum dwellers a satellite dish? Would we begrudge them a better roof? A concrete floor? A propane stove?

Why would it occur to a photographer to “remove” the satellite dish (by PS or by framing the shot)?

If you think there is something “wrong” with a picture of a shack that includes a satellite dish, then you really need to get out into the world a little more.

Preston, who said anything about begrudging anyone anything?

There is nothing “wrong” with a picture of a shack that includes a sat dish. That isn’t what I said.

I have no idea why it would occur to a photographer to “remove” the dish – that was part of the OP’s original premise.

Right, Andrew—wasn’t replying to you individually but generally to the OP and the premise of the post.

i think it’s a bad idea, unethical, to Photoshop anything in or out. One of the very bases of photography is its aspiration to depict reality, however it happens to be. Of course with your eye you are constantly filtering this reality, and choosing what you wish to show, but actually changing it is another level of manipulation entirely.

If there is absolutely no way to frame the theoretical shack with dish in the manner you wish, then you must either find another shack, or admit that you were wrong in your conception, that your idea of an aesthetically pleasing image which does not show the satellite dish simply does not exist. So you must change something—either include the dish in the photo of the shack, or not take a photograph of the shack at all, or modify your aesthetics so that another angle that you may not have chosen before now becomes the angle from which you photograph the shack. These are your ONLY options.

Post-situational alteration in Photoshop is simply NOT acceptable for any photograph which purports to show some version of reality. Obviously, advertising/fictional use is different; then you could remove the satellite dish, cover it with a tarp, Photoshop it out, whatever…

Great, thanks all…

And Preston, please don’t read meanings into my post that are simply not there. I do not begrudge anyone anything and I fail to see how you can interpret my post as such. I didn’t think I needed to spell out every nuance of what I am talking about, since I merely thought this is an interesting topic and that most people here would have thought about it. So let me explain why it would occur to me to remove (or adjust the angle to not show) the dish(again reminding you that this is a hypothetical case). So let’s say I am shooting the shacks in the slums for a report by an NGO, who will use my photos to raise funds for better health, houses, roofs, floors and propane stoves for the people who live there. If I turn in a shot of a shack with a sat dish on the roof, what will be the response of the average reader? “Oh, those people say they need money for roofs, but they can afford a sat dish? Hmm, I think they are just lazy and they want my hard-earned cash for luxuries”. So basically it subverts the purpose and meaning of the shot IN THAT CONTEXT. How you can infer that I don’t want to SHOW the sat dish because I don’t want the people to HAVE it, is beyond me. I think operhaps you are the one that needs to get out more; my farmer’s tan is perfectly ok, thank you.

Tobie

Now, now boys-all this verbal testosterone over a hypothetical satellite dish on a shack.
I’m a hypocrite myself of course-only yesterday I photoshopped a prominent large zit off a girl’s face in one of my portrait photos,(she asked me to). Saved me having to go back and photograph her in reality two weeks later. I’m going to beat myself up right now.

When shooting for an NGO can it be considered advertising work?

Well John you know you don’t really need to go beat yourself up – just Photoshop in a few cuts and bruises, we’ll believe you :)

”:-(

shooting for an NGO is NOT advertising, unless you want to pursue your assignment in a totally unethical manner. NGOs are presumably in the business of addressing real, not fictional, problems, and your photos in such a cause, while they can be subjective and opinionated, should not take liberties with objective reality. Advertising implies a for-profit scenario, somebody is selling something.

Why don’t you just shoot the shack, framed with and without the dish, and then let your client choose the one he or she likes? Why is this a dilemma?

if a photograph is used by an ngo for fund-raising purposes,surely that is advertising?

fund-raising is not the same as advertising - in advertising, the viewer knows that they are presented with an idealized fiction, that those kids eating pop tarts are not really related to each other, do not really live in that 1950s house with the perfect parents - advertisers know that you know this, but present it to you anyway as a desirable fantasy that they hope you want to buy into. NGO fund-raising should be another matter entirely. as the NGO is dealing with real-world issues, not fantasies, and wants your support, their fund-raising imagery is based on showing pictures of the problem, REAL pictures, so that you will want to get involved. If they were fake/advertising pictures, the whole premise would be a fraud. Probably this line gets crossed all the time, but it shouldn’t.