When a picture seems too good to be true
Like a lot of things in life ethical journalism only gets public attention for its absence. The high standards of the majority of practitioners would possibly shock a lot of people because - again - like a lot of things in life more of the bad gets reported than the good, and this tends to overstate the existence of the problem.
When Reuters moved pictures on Friday of volcanic ash from the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland and the consequent disruptions to air travellers that this caused world-wide, one picture stood out from all of the others - so much so it was the clear choice for our coverage in the Herald. Well, we wanted it to be but something about it didn’t seem quite right.
It was a powerful picture for sure, showing billowing volcanic plumes pushing high above an agricultural setting of green fields and farm houses, contrasted against a big blue sky. A remarkable picture certainly - but we began to wonder if perhaps it was a little too remarkable.
Compounding our concern was the fact that none of the other pictures accompanying it on the wire feed rivalled it for shear power and punch, so we decided that some due diligence was in order and put out a call to the Reuters Singapore office to see if they could instil us with some confidence.
It seemed we weren’t the first of the disbelievers as Reuters had by that stage already initiated action to have the picture checked. Call back in two hours they told me.
So by 6pm we were left with a dilemma - to take this amazing picture at face value and accept its veracity until proven otherwise, or to have confidence in our hunch and play it safe. We chose to replace the picture with an inferior one at least for the first edition of Saturday’s paper and wait for Reuters’ response and then to reassess.
Two hours later I spoke to Singapore again. Reuters had made contact with the photographer, an Icelandic local, and sought access to the original. It transpired that before being acquired by the wire service, the photograph had been in the possession of an Icelandic newspaper and it was there that some fairly liberal digital dodging and burning took place. When a comparison was made with the original, it became obvious that post production had been applied to sufficient extent that it violated Reuters’ very firm position on digital enhancement. So they retracted the picture and supplied the original in its place, and we dropped that image into the Herald for later editions.
In fairness, photographers know that adjustments to smoke or clouds are a hard thing to get right when your aim is to have them reproduce in the newspaper with a similar impact upon readers that they had upon you when you stood there. This is because digital cameras often under represent the contrast in clouds and smoke and without a little work in Photoshop no printing press would be able to render a printed picture close to the reality of such a scene. So prepress people apply a degree of contrast in the production process knowing that some will be lost in the printing, with an aim to strike the right balance. And sometimes it’s just that through poor judgement, photographers over cook their pictures in order to increase the drama.
So the question becomes how much is too much, and without being there to see it themselves, and without the benefit of having both images in front of them to compare as we do now, it would have been difficult for Reuters to pick. On this occasion it was just the case that a bit of due diligence determined that what seemed too good to be true indeed was.
The difference a little post-production can make. A plume of volcanic ash rises into the atmosphere from a crater under the ice at the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland on April 14, 2010. Photo by Reuters
source: Wade Laube blog