======================================================= -> This is The 'SPORRS' Mailing List -> Info File: http://www.anet-stl.com/acphotog/sporrs/infosporrs.htm -> Note: Remember to include your name in each list post or reply. -> Please delete all unnecessary quoted text from the original message! =======================================================
This area of electronic retouching of photos has bothered me for some time now ever since my company photos were "enhanced" for use in CSX annual reports, sales brochures, etc., with the use of Scitex and Hell Chromacron technology a decade ago. As a professional photographer I realize that such photo manipulation is part of the game of making a client look good, and I have no problem with retouching "small" things like utility wires in the sky, correcting color balance or cleaning up lineside trash with a computer mouse for photos that will be used commercially in brochures. But as a lens artist I take great offense at someone else playing with my photographic creations, changing and coloring them to their own "vision" when that person was not at the photo location to see what really was there and how I had interpreted the scene with my choice of camera, lens, filters, etc. Too often my CSX photos were absolutely butchered by well-meaning but overly-creative people from advertising agencies who charged for their services by the hour. (Does any reader in the photography business remember when such electronic retouching services cost $700 an hour?) What is perhaps CSXT's most extreme example of this creative overkill was when some guy maticulously manipulated my shot of a GP40 into a rocket blasting away from the earth below and out into space for a chemicals marketing brochure! What a load of nonsense for a railroad company. But CSXT liked it, and paid big bucks for this junk. How does this relate to SPORRS readers? Well, we all would recognize that a photo of a NASA GP40 is a bunch of hogwash, and would not be fooled by such trickery. But what about more subtle electronic photo retouching in order to remove utility wires and poles, a silver electrical cabinet by a turnout, or some offensive graffiti spray painted onto a bridge pier? Such retouched photos in railfan publications have caused consternation among railfan readers who later go to that exact spot to shoot their own photos, only to find that somehow an otherwise "invisible" electrical cabinet or telephone pole has shown up in front of their camera that did not appear in the published photo. I can see where some folks would become angry after spending their dollars and vacation time on a railfan safari only to find that they could not replicate that same image because of an offending object in the scene. Heck, how many people went to Egypt to photograph the pyramids, but could not get exactly the same shot that appeared on the cover of National Geographic because that magazine had "moved" one of the pyramids with electronic retouching! I would think that the publishers of calendars, magazines, books, etc., have a legal and moral obligation to their contributors NOT to manipulate their photos without the consent of the individual photographer. I think that these same publishers have the same moral obligation to their readers to produce calendars, magazines and books with beautiful photos that are unfettered with distracting elements that nobody wants to see in a photograph. A photo does not always have to be an absolute mirror of reality. I also think that, like the pyramid example stated above, people going out to shoot photos based on what they had seen published before they left home should be aware that they might not really get what they actually saw. John B. Corns Owings Mills, Maryland _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] ======================================================= -> SPORRS: 'Serious Photographers Of Railroad Related Subjects' -> Web Site: http://www.anet-stl.com/acphotog/sporrs/ -> Message © 1998 SPORRS® - All Rights Reserved =======================================================
