Photo Manipulation and Ethics

Photo Ethics

A.) This article explains the ethics of photoshop and other picture editing programs, and when or not photographers can appropriately use them. The article shows how some alteration applied can be beneficial to the viewer to understand the story behind the photo, but in modern times, the easy access of photo editing can be applied by anyone, for anything, and for the wrong reasons the majority of the time. Photoshopping colors and other natural things for popular interest and not for storytelling is not a just kind of photo editing. Another main point of this article was the fact that since photoshop and programs like it are so accessible and so many people use them, modern viewers cannot fully trust the pictures put forth in magazines.

B.) Newspapers like the New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post have similar philosophies in that they have strict guidelines as to what the editors can photoshop. One of their major critiques is that no colors should be photoshopped in a photograph. Their strict set of rules gives peace of mind to viewers of those magazines that we will witness accurate photos.

C.) I believe that there is a pretty fine line between ethical and unethical photos, and I think that manipulation of photos for the purpose of clearing up confusion or telling the eye where to go is appropriate, but manipulating pictures for the intent of changing someone's body/features or a scene in general to society's definition of beautiful is extremely unethical. The purpose of photos should show how an accurate depiction of the world, and if the photos are not accurate then viewers don't know what the world really is.

D.)













I found this photo the most unethical because instead of trying to create a school with more diversity, the school found it appropriate to add in 'diversity' using photo editing, which does not solve the issue. The left side of the picture shows the photoshopped edition of the picture with the african american student added in, and the right side shows the original. It was hypocritical that when the school was asked about this, since their response was about how they looked for photographs with diversity, but they didn't have any. So, instead of taking photos with diversity, they photoshopped something in and falsely advertised their school, which cannot in any way be described as ethical.

E.)

I believe this picture is the least unethical because even though the photographer edited the shape of the pyramids to put on the magazine cover, the photographer didn't change anything else about the picture except for to scale to fit on the magazine. The photographer did not have the intent of manipulating the photo for the sake of making it 'more beautiful', but he changed it so he could show the picture to fit the magazine. Though it is the least unethical of the compilation, it can still be described as unethical because it leads viewers to believe that the pyramids will look the same in real life, when they actually will not.