by Tim Gander

Keeping Photography Real

Recurrent controversies over the doctoring of photojournalistic images might seem of distant interest to businesses and organisations which only use commercial images, but there is an important crossover area wherein danger lies for every business.

Most businesses using photographs in their corporate communications are in the main either buying stock photos or commissioning them from a photographer like myself. As these pictures are being used to illustrate or promote a commercial venture in some sales capacity (website, brochure, catalogue etc), they don’t have to conform to the standards of photojournalism. Assuming they observe normal laws, their purpose is to illustrate a concept, or the values of the organisation, not some higher truth.

But occasionally businesses will engage a photographer to take press and PR pictures. These of course are destined for use in newspapers, magazines, trade journals perhaps and almost certainly online in social media and so on. The medium really doesn’t matter; such pictures are taken as a matter of record and should be treated as seriously as if they were showing history unfolding.

It doesn’t matter if the photos show a cheque being presented, a ribbon being cut or a visit by an MP or Royalty, the intention of these photos is to illustrate something which has happened in the life of the organisation and should be treated as historical records.

Where a photo is set up, such as for a presentation of an award, a prize, the launch of a new venture or whatever, it’s generally obvious from the way the participants are posed and often looking to camera that the scenario has been choreographed by the photographer, and this is fine because the viewer will understand they’re seeing a staged photo. However, this staging isn’t a licence for elements or people in the picture to be doctored in, out, moved or changed in any way. What happens in front of the camera should be shown in the final result.

Photo purports to show Kim Jong Un standing by a ship's rail at sea pointing to a missile launching from the water. A fake photo.

Some manipulation just draws ridicule, as this North Korean press shot did.

It’s not uncommon for a client to suggest that I can Photoshop something in or out when I’ve taken a photo for press release and often they look at me quizzically when I explain that I cannot do this for ethical reasons. No photographer can because it breaches the editorial code of ethics, and if caught could seriously harm the reputation of the photographer and their hopes of finding future work.

It also does the client no favours when the “internet” gets hold of a story of doctoring or manipulation. The business name may be spread far and wide, but it will be couched in negative terms and with a (possibly) permanent and negative connotation.

And so as tempting as it may be to say “it’s just a group photo,” or “only for the web,” don’t be tempted into breaking ethics for the sake of a “better” image. It could ruin your image.

in Industry Comment / Uncategorized 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

No pixels were harmed…

I have an excellent friend on twitter, @lau_merritt, who has been very supportive of my photography work since I can’t remember when, but certainly since not that long after I joined twitter. I’m sure she was among my first followers.

We keep in touch, re-tweet each other’s posts and I especially appreciate it when she reposts my blog articles… which I have a funny feeling she’ll do today.

Now the other day the subject of photoshopping came up. Lau, a keen amateur photographer, was struggling with some photos she’d taken on a recent trip. She was frustrated that she’d only just got the camera she took with her, hadn’t had time to get to grips with the controls, and had shot in jpeg mode where she’d meant to shoot in RAW.

It was when Lau came to edit the images that the Photoshop fun really started. I received some messages of frustration and Lau felt she was butchering her images. We joked about the slaughter, the sounds of pixels screaming,  red pixels sprayed up the walls – this kind of weird humour appeals to me.

The culmination of our conversation was a rather excellent sketch which Lau drew and which, with her permission, I’m featuring here. After the sketch came the blog article, which you can view by clicking on the photo. I’m hoping for the movie and the musical to be announced soon. The Photoshop Butcher, queue deep, growly voiceover, “In a world where pixels have no meaning, welcome to the slaughter…”

Sketch of a woman butchering photos

Lau’s Photo Butcher – click the photo to see her full article

in My News 2 comments
 by Tim Gander

Photo case study: Location portrait.

I’ve written before on the subject of Photoshop, the pitfalls, dangers and terrors, but “meh”, nobody listened so I thought I’d show a recent example of where I have used some photo manipulation to benefit the final photo.

You see when I shoot for corporate clients, I prefer to get things pretty much spot-on in the camera, rather than taking any old muzzy smudge and hoping I can sort it all out later on the ‘puter. I have heard tales of “professional” photographers who work this way, and it tends to end in tears and a lot of wasted CEO/staff time, not to mention the wasted marketing budget, because by the time somebody has spotted that the Emperor’s new clothes are in fact a figment of the imagination, the cheeky little monkey with the winning smile and the expensive looking camera has caught the next plane to Rio with the company cheque already safely banked.

I digress; back to Photoshop, or to use the verb form, “photoshopping”. Not to be confused with the act of shopping for photos.

In the case where I was asked to get a website cover shot for Clucas Communications the brief was to get a double portrait of Peter and Sibylle Clucas against a white background so the designer could either leave the subjects against white or undertake a cutout more easily. In the event the final shot is used as a cutout against a white page, which works well.

That would seem easy enough, except that the shooting conditions were tricky (to get enough space we ended up setting up the shot outdoors with portable background and lights), so these were not perfect studio conditions. My one compromise then was that I knew I could get the background white-ish, but it wouldn’t be fully white as if we were in the studio with perfect lighting.

Below are the results, and the sharp-eyed among (amongst? amo amas amat?) you will notice that pretty much all I’ve done is go at the background with the dodge tool to lighten the highlights (only affecting those areas which are already almost white) to achieve a perfect whiteness any soap manufacturer would be proud of.

 

before and after photoshop examples of corporate portraits

Spot the difference. Can't see it? Oh well...

And despite the fact that most weeks I’ll have to listen to some smart Alec or Alice telling me what I can fix in Photoshop, I still stick to the principle that for my work, Photoshop is great for removing the dust spots that are the curse of the digital SLR and correcting the odd colour cast and generally preparing an image so that it is technically viable for either print or web. I’m not going to make a rainy day sunny, or drop the Taj Mahal into the background to make the view from your office window look more interesting. If that’s what you’re after, you’ll be wanting a different breed of photographer. One that will probably be in Brazil by the time you realise those “interesting” photos are in fact junk.

in Case Studies 9 comments
 by Tim Gander

When is photo manipulation too much?

I’ll start by apologizing that this subject is so dry, it makes a very dry thing look wetter than a very wet thing. I never was much good at similes. Which brings me not very smoothly to the follow up article on post production (see here) with a few words on photo manipulation.

The question is, when it comes to images shot for your business, when does post production become photo manipulation? At what point does it become unacceptable?

To make better sense of this, I had better define the terms “photo manipulation” and “post production”.

Post production is generally accepted as the process of making an image taken straight from the camera suitable for reproduction in whatever medium it is destined for, as outlined in that previous article.

Carried out within acceptable boundaries, post production won’t change the meaning or intention of the original photo. It’s much the same as the good old days when you had a photo negative printed at the local lab. They would make sure your negative was clean, and they would also make adjustments for exposure, colour cast etc.

It goes without saying, though I’ll say it anyway, that image manipulation in any news, sport or feature photo is unacceptable. For businesses issuing press releases, the simple rule is don’t manipulate. You can damage your reputation and attract negative press and blog comment (remember this?), which will never go away and will take a long time to repair.

photo of Mells Iron Works at night

Made up of 8 image layers, this was a personal project not destined for commercial or press use.

Photo manipulation would cover things like adding to, or removing elements from an image, distorting people to make them look slimmer, taking an ugly sign or street furniture out of a background, adding a logo which wasn’t in the original.

A clear example of over-manipulation would be if I changed a self portrait to make it look as though I had humanoid ears. That would just be ridiculous, and those who know me would never stop laughing.

As wonderful as digital is, and for all Photoshop can do, it’s still extremely important to get the shot right in the camera. Not take any old snap, and hope for a technical fix later.

I do think the rules can shift a little when it comes to a corporate photo for a web site, but I still advise caution. For example, I will happily remove pimples or other non-permanent blemishes, but permanent ones stay. The person in the photo needs to be recognisable.

Dropping people or objects into a commercial image, or removing them from a scene, could cause problems of misrepresentation. If done sensitively and with appropriate captioning, it may not cause a major problem, though it’s important to take context into account, and that’s too much to cover here.

Maybe the best way to avoid disasters is to ask yourself the question: Is this a dishonest representation? What would my mother think? That last question alone should put you on the straight and narrow.

Article and photo © Tim Gander. All rights reserved. The articles in this blog may only be reproduced for non-commercial purposes.

in Industry Comment 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Post Production? ’tis the Devil’s work!

Post production is the process that dare not speak its name. It is surely some manner of witchcraft; the sort of thing only the Devil’s nerdy brother would be into. So what is it? And why should you care?

The concept is simple, the practice less so. Post production is what happens to the photos after the shoot, and before they’re delivered. And though you don’t necessarily need to know what post production is, it is helpful if you have an idea of the basics.

The image file that comes straight from a digital camera isn’t matched to any particular use, and is therefore not matched to any use. To explain that a little better; the camera file will normally be the right resolution for web (72dpi) but will be too large a file to upload. At the same time, it will be physically large enough to produce a print, but needs to be converted to around 300dpi for good quality print output. So the file needs to be resized to suit the end use.

Other things need to happen too. Often the photo will need some tweaking to get the colour, brightness and contrast perfect for the intended use. Also, while the image will be perfectly in focus (because I don’t take out-of-focus photos – no sniggering at the back!) it will need a little digital sharpening to make it appear really crisp in print or on the web. That’s just a characteristic of digital.

Digital SLR cameras tend to have a problem with dust getting in through the lens mount (normally when changing lenses) and adhering to the imaging chip. These then show up as grey blobs and hairs on the image which need to be cloned out in Photoshop or they’ll show up in the published image.

jpeg showing dust on highpass dslr filter

Play Spot the Dust! I've highlighted some. Click the pic to find more.

Adding captions, applying the relevant colour profile and conversion from RAW to jpeg format are also part of post production.

While some of these processes can be done in batches, some have to be carried out on each individual file. This can add considerable time to the overall process of shooting and supplying images to clients, and that time has to be factored into the assignment fee or charged separately, at which point my client might be wondering what they’re paying for. If I’ve factored it in, where another photographer hasn’t, it can make me look expensive, but then I’m not a “dump and runner”.

A dump-and-run photographer is one who simply writes the image files straight from camera to disk with little or no post production, dumps the files on the client, takes the money and runs. They may look like a cheaper option, but the truth is you’re not getting a professional service or top quality images, and this will be reflected in the final project.

Post production can be tricky and incredibly dull work, but I pride myself in the quality of work I deliver. And while you don’t need to know all the technical details, it’s at least worth understanding that it is a necessary process. And the Devil’s nerdy brother doesn’t charge as much as he used to…

in Advice 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Captain Caption to the Rescue!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? NO! It’s CAPTAIN CAPTION TO THE RESCUE!!!!! (hooray!)

One area of photography you don’t hear too much about is captions, and yet they are very important and pretty useful. So here’s Captain Caption (if only you could see my splendid cape and lycra stockings) to explain a bit more about them.

In the good old days, a caption was a little slip of paper stuck to the reverse of a photo. It would say the date the photo was taken, state the photographer’s (and/or agency) name and contact details, give the who, what, where, when and why of the content, and the copyright status of the image.

Of course it’s quite difficult to stick a piece of paper to the back of a digital photo. I tried once and it broke my laptop. So instead there is an embedded file (or table for the computer pedants) into which the photographer can and should write all this information. It’s called the IPTC , Metadata or File Info field of the photo and is accessible through Photoshop and other photo editing and viewing software, but not in standard image browsing software that comes with a PC, which is often why people don’t know about captions. For simplicity I’ll be talking about the IPTC table as used within the Photoshop File Info menu.

Within this table, there are various fields which can be filled in, the main one being Description. Here the photographer, or anyone with the right to add and alter the text, can enter a title, name of the author (photographer), description (the who, what, when, where and why), keywords and copyright notice.

IPTC file info field

This pane is accessed through Photoshop/File/File Info. Click to see more detail.

Taking press and PR as an example, it’s good professional practice to send properly captioned photos with press releases because it means that the photo can always be matched up with the right story. Remember, it’s not difficult for the photo and press release to become separated at the other end. You can also put other useful information in, such as how to contact the PR person handling the story if it’s a PR picture. It’s a good idea also stipulate in the caption that the photo is only to be used in conjunction with the original article, to prevent it being used as a stock image if the PR client is involved in an embarrassing future story.

There is another, even more up-to-date and compelling reason to have informative, descriptive captions on photos and a good reason to use the keywords cell of the File Info table, and that’s when it comes to using photos online. This being a blog of limited length I’m going to leave you on a cliffhanger, and you’ll have to tune in next week to hear how Captain Caption gets those dastardly Web Spiders to crawl to a different tune…

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