Toledo Blade photog quits after altering picture

Blade finds more questionable photos...

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003571081

 

Just because it doesn't change the meaning doesn't mean it's OK. It's unethical, and it's as simple as that.
It was known early on that the Blade likely would find more examples. It's not hard, just time consuming, to do when you have access to the digital outtakes. It's been a good reminder for our staff.

 

Any news shooter in the US should know this is unacceptable. To others, something like this might be considered minor, but to us, it's not.

 

Another part of this that not surprisingly has not been mentioned here yet:

Likely the photographer lied when he claimed he didn't mean to transmit that version. If they are finding a number of other examples of alteration, I'd say he meant to send that one.

 

Well the Blade did their own internal investigation and found Detrich had altered 74 of 947 of his photos since January...

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070415/NEWS08/704150316/-1/NEWS

 

[quote author=Toledo Blade story=topic=39854.msg1119415#msg1119415 date=1176636410]
The changes Mr. Detrich made included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires, electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery.[/quote]

my man inserted shrubs into his photos

brilliant

 

That's not the half of it.

The man put a basketball in a photo....

 

yeah, his editors really got suspicious when he inserted a shrub into a basketball photo

 

One of the photogs at our joint -- a grouchy old gaffer who has been there since Jesus was in kindergarten -- does this stuff all the time, and it drives me nuts.

One time he had an assignment to take a picture of a MLB player who was having the ballfield at his old Hooterville high school named after him.

Grouchy Shutterbug misses the dedication ceremony for some reason, I forget now what it was, more than likely he stretched his 1-hour lunch break into 1:45 as is his wont.

Anyway, when Grouchy arrived on the scene, Bigshot Ballplayer is getting into his car to leave. Grouchy quickly takes a picture of Bigshot leaning against a cement block wall.

Then, Grouchy gets back in his own car, drives back to the other side of the ballfield, and takes a picture of the sign on the fence designating the field as "Bigshot Ballplayer Ballfield."

Later that night, we get the photo: Bigshot Ballplayer standing next to the dedication sign. Funny thing is, the borderline edge around Bigshot looks a little blurry and fuzzy. Also, the shadows falling on the fence seem to be coming from the completely opposite direction as the shadows on Bigshot's face. I zoom in on the photo to the pixel level, and you can SEE the borderline where the image of Bigshot was pasted onto the picture of the fence.

We immediately buzzed the ME, who had gone home for the day. "Well, Grouchy has worked here since 1927, you know how he is, nobody can tell him how to take pictures, yadda yadda."

"Well, it's just wrong, you can't do it," was our response.

"Don't worry about it," Mr. ME said. "I'll take the appropriate steps at the appropriate time."

"So we don't run the photo?"

"Nah, go ahead, run it, we promised the Hooterville High booster club we would run a big photo, and Mr. Publisher has a bunch of lunchtime pals in the booster club, go ahead and run it."

I did take at least the step of changing the credit line to read "photo montage/illustration by Grouchy Shutterbug" as opposed to "photo by Grouchy Shutterbug."

Grouchy got pissed at that. Said it made him look like he's making things up. :

Got called in for a little wrist-slapping by Mr. Publisher, too. "If you hadn't done that, odds are none of the readers would have noticed the photo was photoshopped."

 

And your response would be: "YOU FUCKING DID!"

 

That's pretty much what I told him (not quite as diplomatically, of course).

Of course, Grouchy thinks I'm a "snot-nosed smart-mouthed kid."

Granted, I am 25 years younger than him -- but he's fuckin' 73 or something.

 

Fuck him. You're right; he's wrong. Period.