Retouching Reality
What are the creative and ethical aspects of digital photo manipulation?
By the end of this class you will be able to:
- Consider both the creative benefits and ethical drawbacks of digital photo manipulation.
- Understand the importance of purpose and context in evaluating digitally edited images.
- Think critically about how the Internet allows users to both celebrate and regulate our “copy-change-paste” culture.
By the end of this class you will be able to:
- Consider both the creative benefits and ethical drawbacks of digital photo manipulation.
- Understand the importance of purpose and context in evaluating digitally edited images.
- Think critically about how the Internet allows users to both celebrate and regulate our “copy-change-paste” culture.
In class:
Though the issue of digital photo manipulation may seem specific, it is an example of the much larger and more general problem of what happens when easy access to user-friendly new technologies outpaces the formation of ethics and use of images. We will examine different purposes and contexts of digital image editing and explore various benefits and drawbacks of photo manipulation by looking at 3 examples in class:
- Photo editing as fun and artistic
- Ethical questions about altering news photos
- The impact of manipulating photos for a different audience.
Questions to think about:
- Have you ever been fooled by an image online that you thought was real but turned out to be fake?
- Where do we draw the line between creativity and deception?
- How do the purpose and context of photo editing affect how we feel about it?
- What role does the Internet play in allowing us to share, inspire, and critique images that have been edited?
Though the issue of digital photo manipulation may seem specific, it is an example of the much larger and more general problem of what happens when easy access to user-friendly new technologies outpaces the formation of ethics and use of images. We will examine different purposes and contexts of digital image editing and explore various benefits and drawbacks of photo manipulation by looking at 3 examples in class:
- Photo editing as fun and artistic
- Ethical questions about altering news photos
- The impact of manipulating photos for a different audience.
Questions to think about:
- Have you ever been fooled by an image online that you thought was real but turned out to be fake?
- Where do we draw the line between creativity and deception?
- How do the purpose and context of photo editing affect how we feel about it?
- What role does the Internet play in allowing us to share, inspire, and critique images that have been edited?
First Case Study: The Pioneer Woman is a blog run by a woman in Oklahoma. She sometimes blogs about her passion for photography and shares tips for photo editing. She even hosts photo-editing contests for her readers. In this particular contest, she invited anyone to digitally edit a photo of her family’s dog, Charlie, and submit it online.
Questions to think about:
- What are some different editing techniques that you see?
- Which photos are meant to look artistic? Which ones are meant to look funny?
- Which photos look real, and which don’t? Why?
- What are some different editing techniques that you see?
- Which photos are meant to look artistic? Which ones are meant to look funny?
- Which photos look real, and which don’t? Why?
Second Case Study: Retouching is a form of photo editing, and considered creative and expressive. Retouching can be deceptive or unethical because it might mislead people. It's controversial, especially in journalism.
Read First:
In 2006, Reuters was forced to fire a photographer, remove images from circulation and change policy after finding that a photo of an Israeli air raid on Beirut had been manipulated. Bloggers were the first to notice that the clouds in an image taken by Adnan Hajj, a Lebanese photographer, had been darkened. Soon after, Reuters issued an apology and said it withdrew from its database all of the images taken by Hajj. “There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image,” Tom Szlukovenyi, Reuters global picture editor, said at the time. “Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures, and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict, unalterable policy.”
Next:
Click on the button below to proceed to the next case study.
And consider these questions as you discuss in groups:
- Why did the news service apologize for this digitally manipulated photo? Why was it so controversial?
- Do you think it’s unethical for news articles to use digitally edited photos? Why or why not?
- Who were the first people to notice this photo mishap? What role does the Internet play in allowing us to recognize and judge digitally manipulated images?
Read First:
In 2006, Reuters was forced to fire a photographer, remove images from circulation and change policy after finding that a photo of an Israeli air raid on Beirut had been manipulated. Bloggers were the first to notice that the clouds in an image taken by Adnan Hajj, a Lebanese photographer, had been darkened. Soon after, Reuters issued an apology and said it withdrew from its database all of the images taken by Hajj. “There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image,” Tom Szlukovenyi, Reuters global picture editor, said at the time. “Reuters has zero tolerance for any doctoring of pictures, and constantly reminds its photographers, both staff and freelance, of this strict, unalterable policy.”
Next:
Click on the button below to proceed to the next case study.
And consider these questions as you discuss in groups:
- Why did the news service apologize for this digitally manipulated photo? Why was it so controversial?
- Do you think it’s unethical for news articles to use digitally edited photos? Why or why not?
- Who were the first people to notice this photo mishap? What role does the Internet play in allowing us to recognize and judge digitally manipulated images?
Third Case Study: Microsoft replaces a black man's head with a white man's head in photo for an advertising campaign.
Click on the button below to read an article about the controversy over the photo, and with your group members discuss the following questions:
- Is there a difference between a digitally manipulated image in an advertisement and one in a news article? Do the benefits and drawbacks of photo manipulation depend on the context, which means where and how the photos are used?
- Some people wondered if Microsoft changed the photo in order to appeal to a mostly white Polish audience. Would that be a valid reason to manipulate the photo? Do you think what Microsoft did was ethical?
- Do you think we should have rules about how photos are digitally manipulated? Why or why not? If so, what would they be?
Click on the button below to read an article about the controversy over the photo, and with your group members discuss the following questions:
- Is there a difference between a digitally manipulated image in an advertisement and one in a news article? Do the benefits and drawbacks of photo manipulation depend on the context, which means where and how the photos are used?
- Some people wondered if Microsoft changed the photo in order to appeal to a mostly white Polish audience. Would that be a valid reason to manipulate the photo? Do you think what Microsoft did was ethical?
- Do you think we should have rules about how photos are digitally manipulated? Why or why not? If so, what would they be?
Check out what the 8th graders learned about real and fake imagery . Can you tell which photos are real and being used in a real context?
Click on the button to proceed to the assessment
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Extension Project
- Using the link to the right, alter a photo. - Save it to the computer. - Send me the picture by using the assignment form at the bottom of this page.Use sumo paint to create your own altered image. |