What does straight out of the camera actually mean?
For most categories of art or non professional photography all this talk of
purity and "SOOC" is bull! I especially hate some film or in some cases digital photographers that say things like "This is straight out of the camera, I don't
believe in altering the image" or some such nonsense. What do they think
showing an image on the screen is besides an alteration, and believe me
there is nothing natural about scanning or the guts of a DSLR. Read here for another take.
On my part I consider the taking of the photograph the most important part and what comes later just window dressing.
The Shaw-Pellegrin Controversy Around The Photographer Of The Year Awards
This year there seems to be a lot more then the usual controversy over
this year's World Press selections for photograph of the year.
www.designboom.com/art/world-press-photo-2013-image-alter...
nppa.org/node/36604
www.theverge.com/2013/2/20/4009724/photo-contest-winner-c...
www.petapixel.com/2013/02/19/why-do-photo-contest-winners...
Everybody loves a real life soap opera. This is a failure of the editing process for photojournalism, what ever happened to fact checking?
Not to side with Pellegrin but his I'm a blogger not a reporter reasoning is some what of a cop-out while his hiding behind being a critic might be a more valid reason.
I think the bigger picture is the partial lack of standards for the POY organization. It's not as though this is the Oscars but it is looking more and more like show business. Hopefully next year might be different:
lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/prize-winning-photos-an...
It's not as though there aren't any standards for "SOOC" at least for reporters. It's a pity that the POY didn't know about them until after the 2012 awards:
Interesting that the last photo in the above article wouldn't even pass:
A handbook of Reuters journalism
A guide to standards, style and operations
Photoshop and how to use it
Photoshop is a highly sophisticated image manipulation programme. We use only a tiny part of its potential capability to format our pictures, crop and size them and balance the tone and colour. For us it is a presentational tool. The rules are – no additions or deletions, no misleading the viewer by manipulation of the tonal and colour balance to disguise elements of an image or to change the context.
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| Reporter |
I will leave you with some famous quotes:
“To quote out of context is the essence of the photographer's craft”“You see something happening and you bang away at it. Either you get what you saw or you get something else-- and whichever is better you print.”
“The photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed.”
“The photo is a thing in itself. And that's what still photography is all about.”
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| Blood On Their Hands |
