photography ethics, YouTube & welcome to the future
 

Something that's caught my interest lately is trying to watch the ways new media is affecting our society. It's hard to notice this stuff while it's happening; the world is changing around you and it's going faster and faster and you can't keep up . . .

whew! Just a second while I catch my breath! A lot of this has to do with copyright and intellectual property law, which is just exploding right now. Specifically:

1) photography ethics--what responsibility does one owe the owner or original photography of a picture? If you alter a picture, should you indicate that on the face? I ran across a discussion of this channel surfing the other day, but I've also considered this question with regard to evidence photography at work.

2) YouTube. It's 3 years old this month, and already it's evident, that like other web-based innovations preceding it, video sharing is changing the way we relate to the world.

I'm pretty late to learning about video stuff on the internet, but just a quick look at the Wikipedia article on YouTube is mind boggling: Far from mere copyright violation, in 3 years YouTube has been connected with espionage, animal abuse, Neo-Nazis, school bullying, spam advertisements, censorship, political promotion . . .

Pretty powerful stuff.

and, thank you, for letting me ramble on. Don't know where I'm going with this, just that it's an interesting topic, and I'm keeping my eyes and mind open on it.

It's common on photography forums to indicate whether or not you want others to borrow your images and repost their own edited versions. However it is considered in good taste and out of respect to ask beforehand every time. I frequent a couple different forums where longtime professional photographers post and this seems to be a common thread between them. Always ask, and always give credit with or on the image.
I personally don't care who does what with my images. I'm not aspiring to be professional or anything. If someone enjoys my photos and wants to put their own spin on them, great have at it I'd love to see your work. Though I would take issue with someone stealing my photos (representing them as their own).

I think that the point the fellow I saw talk about it made was that, intrinisically, photographs ought to represent a true, authentic, representation of what is--at that moment. When that representation is altered, even if just to enhance the color, it is no longer an accurate historical or, certainly, evidentiary record.

I agree with trying to maintain the integrity of the photo and the scene it portrays, to a point though. Every photograph has had to go through the developing process, which alters the image to make it resemble the real life situation that the photographer tried to capture.

You have to keep in mind that a photograph is a visual interpretation of the physical scene, never an exact replica. In a perfect world, one could say that original photographs do in fact "represent a true, authentic, representation of what is--at that moment." Unfortunately, it just isn't so. For example, Ansel Adams is one of the most famed photographers of the 20th century. But for all his famous images, such as the Snake River in the Tetons, his real genius was in the darkroom adjusting his images until they came out as the eye popping, gorgeous scenes that they are.

My point being, all images by being produced in the first place, are adjusted and altered so there is no such thing as a "perfect" image of any given scene. Differences in all the different facets of exposure make it that way, and there's really no way around it. All people can do is try to find that sweet spot where the image *best* represents what was actually there at that place and time.

There are millions of pictures on the web, that are unlabeled, unexplained and often uncredited.

some very good points & things to think about. Images have always been altered, it's true. Of course, there is altered, in the traditional way, for things like color, contrast, red eye removal, and then there's altered, in the sense of "'shopped.'" There's uses for that, too, but I think that without being aware of this type of thing, the potential for abuse is there.

that's true enough. I guess my starting point is photographs for evidence in civil trials, which is another type of thing altogether. Authentication becomes even more critical in criminal trials.

I think it greatly depends on the purpose of the photograph. Certainly, photographs depicting news events should be held to a higher standard of . . . unalterability? than a pic for an ad should be.

Yes the potential for abuse was shown during Israel's bombing of Lebanon in 2006 for example. One image that stands out in my mind was of some smoking ruins of a building, that had extra smoke added to it making the scene more dramatic I guess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Le..._controversies

So you're def. right on target there. Thankfully, people are working on software that can detect image alterations and determine what changes were made to the original image and how much those changes affect the image as a whole.
http://www.news.com/Adobe-eyes-fraud...3-6165726.html

Altering photographs ('shopping), to mislead or deceive people, is a whole different ball of wax, than altering a picture because you want to create a different mood or prettier picture.