From: adamg@world.std.com (Adam M Gaffin)
Subject: Re: Photo Journalism and new improvements?
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 02:35:13 GMT

In article <204648@unix.cis.pitt.edu> jsast@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Jonathan S. Anderson) writes:
>A few years ago, I attended a photojournalism conference sponsored by
>the Pittsburgh Press.  The press does this conference every year and gets
>some of the best photographers from all over to attend.  (I highly recommend
>this conference to any budding photographers out there)  Anyway, as usual
>they brought samples of all the newest technologies to the conference.
>
>The technology that caused the biggest stir was digital cameras.  The concept
>was simple.  You slipped a floppy disk or some other storage device
>into your camera and went your merry way sans film.  At the current level of 
>technology, reproduction of such photos is not that great.  The problem
>is not with getting the picture onto a computer screen where it can
>be cropped and pasted right into the newspaper, but rather the printing was
>bad.  Currently, it will cost an arm and a leg to buy any equipment that
>has the resolution needed to be of proper quality for newsprint and the
>equipment would be rather bulky besides.  The technology may be quite
>commonplace in a few years, however.
>
Possibly sooner than you think.  AP has been busy replacing its old analog
photo machines with digital systems, so that even small papers now get
their wire (at least AP) photos in digital form  (When we first got ours
we (or rather I) had some fun taking the stain off Gorbachev's head, re-
moving people's teeth and erasing Texas from the weather maps.  When we
went "live," we disabled that little editing "feature" for obvious reasons). 
The next step is a digital darkroom, where prints are essentially scanned
into the computer from the negative rather than turned into a print.  From
that to quality Xapshots is probably not very far.

>
>1) If the image can be stored digitally, it could also be easily transmitted
>via radio signal to waiting editors.  While the photographer is taking
>pictures, his editor could be back at the photo desk cropping them!  Imagine
>how much faster the news could get to the reader.

This will be a boon on deadline, but I wonder if it will make much difference
for other photos. Most photographers I know take tons of shots, later picking
out the one they like.

>2) Images could be much more easily stored and cataloged in a filing system
>without the need to make occasional reproductions of old photos.

Photos take up a lot of memory, though.  It's still cheaper for us to print
out photos and stick them in a file drawer.  But as the cost of memory drops...
>
>3) Techniques such as burning, dodging, pushing film, etc. would become
>virtually obsolete.  Any light or dark spots in the image could be compensated
>for directly on a computer terminal.  Even a poor exposure could be adjusted
>right at the monitor.  The potential for better photographs is infinite.

You can do this now with the AP Leafdesk system.  Connect one of them to a 
Mac and you can do amazing things!

>might be able to grab your floppy disk, but the camera could also be 
>transmitting the same image to any one of a thousand places.  Would this be
>placing the photojournalist into more danger.  In the past, some officials in
>various places are notorious for grabbing film, hitting the journalist a few
>times and releasing him.  What would happen if the official knew his photo
>was taken and there was nothing he could do about it?
>
It would probably just make him madder and so whack you that much harder.

>5) On a practical level, the public's faith in journalists' integrity may
>falter.  Currently, the public has the impression that what they see in a
>picture must be truth.  (Many of us know the wonders of spot tone and
>"artful dodging", but even so... Pictures generally do not lie.)  If an
>image could be stored in a computer, the computer could just as easily be
>used to alter that same image in any way desirable.  Journalistic integrity
>should keep this from happenning, but just the fact that it is possible
>could force the public to lose faith in that same integrity.
>
>6) On a more realistic level, many photographers would be very tempted to
>edit out objects in backgrounds.  How many photojournalists do you know that
>are out there looking for the cleanest background possible?  Depth of field
>would no longer be a worry.  If a tree trunk is growing out of someone's head,
>you simply erase the tree instead of burning or cropping it out.  Does this
>lend to any unethical behavior on the part of the journalist.  What becomes
>of the art if anyone can take the perfect photo?
>
>
Unfortunately, this has already come up, in at least three cases that I 
know about.  National Geographic used a computer system to push the Pyramids
together when they wouldn't fit on the cover.  The Orange County Register
won a Pulitzer for its photo coverage of the Olympics -- but the judges 
didn't know that the paper had altered brownish, smoggy skies to look 
bright blue.  And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch removed a soda can (through
the marvels of computers) from its photo of a freelancer who had just won
the paper a Pulitizer for photography.

But is any of this really any different from the old days when women had
offending body parts removed through well established darkroom techniques,
or even the old Soviet trick of making all the guys atop the Kremlin
look like they were the same height?




-- 
Adam Gaffin
Middlesex News, Framingham, Mass.
adamg@world.std.com
Voice: (508) 626-3968. Fred the Middlesex News Computer: (508) 872-8461.