Posted by Curtis Franklin, September 2007
Interesting readings this week — interesting from two different, but related, directions.The first section of reading covered the concepts used in photo editing; not the “burn in here, crop there” mechanics, but the broad concepts of the factors that make an image useful, meaningful, and powerful. The second section dealt with the ethics of photojournalism — the details of which images should be published, how they should be taken, and how they may be manipulated if they’re to tell an honest, accurate story that does no harm.
One of the first questions asked in the editing section was, essentially, whether the photographer and editor should be two separate people. As a writer, I think the answer is, “absolutely.” Of course, there are situations and publications (like this blog) for which the creator and editor are the same. In an ideal situation, though, a photographer — like a writer — will have another intelligent set of eyes looking at the work and making it stronger. I’ve had the experience of falling in love with a “killer lede” or just being wrapped up in the sound of my own words. A good editor has been far more ruthless than I could be in making sure that every word served the story, no matter how much sweat I’d dripped over a particular phrase or paragraph.
I was taken with, and a bit surprised, at the treatment of issues like black and white versus color images. I grew up looking at black and white images in newspapers and news magazines. I came to feel that black and white images had more power and, somehow, more “truth” than color images. I’ve also shot and developed hundreds of rolls of Tri-X Pan, so I have a feel for black and white shooting that I don’t yet have for digital color work. With that as a background, I was surprised to read that readers have such a strong preference for, and faith in, color photos. I believe editors have to listen to reader preferences in such things, and present, to the greatest extent possible, images that readers will actually look at and believe.
Listening to the readers doesn’t necessarily extend to photo subjects, however. There’s no surprise in the knowledge that readers would rather see puppies and babies snuggled together than corpses posed in the aftermath of violence. As journalists we must tell our readers the stories we know they should read, even if it means doing the extra work of convincing them that the stories are worth their time. Learn from the reader when it comes to the most effective way of telling a story? Absolutely. Let the whims of the readers dictate which stories we tell? No.
When reading about the ethics of photojournalism, I found a breakdown into three broad areas: the behavior of the photographer when taking photographs; the decision of the photo editor when deciding which photographs to run; and the treatment of the images between the first two ethical points. In many ways, I found Kobre’s discussions flow well into my understanding of journalism: readers trust journalists to take them places they can’t go without our help. The ethics questions deal with whether the place we’re taking them is the place we say we’re taking them (honesty), whether we’re taking them to a place worth going to (relevance), and whether we’re worthy guides and companions on the trip (decency). Case after case has shown that momentary sensation can attend the lack of any one of these, but a long-term relationship requires the unfailing application of all three.
