This is mostly fun, now … but sixty years ago, if I had the same ethical standards I do now, I’d be pretty frightened by this book on how to retouch photos that Michael Zhang has written about at PetaPixel.
I will grant that most of the photos in the book are commercial or corporate images and not what we would consider pure journalism. But still … to “glamorize” an image by adding more smoke from a factory stack seems … well … odd.
Maybe, maybe, this time we’ll get this to happen – The New York Times is reporting the Obama administration has caked Sen. Charles Schumer to revive a federal shield law bill.
A democracy must have a free and open press, one that does not work under fear of the government.
“We have reviewed the RAW image, as supplied by World Press Photo, and the resulting published JPEG image. It is clear that the published photo was retouched with respect to both global and local color and tone. Beyond this, however, we find no evidence of significant photo manipulation or compositing. Furthermore, the analysis purporting photo manipulation is deeply flawed, as described briefly below.”
So … was there someone on a grassy knoll with a reflector?
The news came out a few days ago that Adobe will not release a seventh iteration of its Creative Suite software, instead moving to a subscription model called Creative Cloud.
And then my email, Twitter, RSS and Facebook accounts all exploded with rage about how THOSE GREEDY BASTARDS DON’T UNDERSTAND I NEED TO PIRATE THEIR SOFTWARE SO I CAN DO MY OWN CREATIVE WORK AND HOPE IT ISN’T STOLEN, AS WELL!!
Or something like that.
Adobe has essential moved to a pay-as-you-go model – you want Photoshop for a month? That’s $20. (Or thereabouts, there is some confusion on the costs of all this, but that seems to be the generally accepted number at the moment.)
As photojournalists, Photoshop – even in its massive overkillingness – is still the standard. If you bought a fully, appropriately licensed version of it (because, OF COURSE you would NEVER pirate it or claim to be a student) you’d pay about $625 for it.
Let’s say you run it for two years before doing an upgrade, that puts you at $31.25 a month. Now, the upgrade is less at about $200. So, the next two years end up costing you $8.33 a month. Over four years, you’ve spent $18.17 a month to license (not own) Photoshop. And you may have skipped an upgrade.
Under the new plan, Photoshop is going to cost you … $20 a month. Or a small coffee every 30 days. And all those smart folks who in their businesses charge equipment rental fees to clients? You can now charge them for software rental, too. And mark it up.
So, to sum up: If you’re starting out, you can shell out $625 for Photoshop CS6 right now and be locked in to it for however long you want to run it. Or, you can shell out $20 a month and get all the updates … and, for the next four years, your monthly cost will be about the same.
Can we stop freaking out now?
We joke about launching a Drone Journalism program here at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and, if we ever did (we won’t), I suppose we’d have to have an ethics and/or business class to deal with what happens when your drone crashes into Lady Justice.
(Thanks to Doral Chenoweth for the link.)
This has almost nothing to do with the war, but … the U.S. Army’s deputy commander of the Public Affair’s Office wants to get soldiers to stop “photobombing” images because of the cost – roughly $125. Annually.
Of course, the real cost is to the seriousness and importance of these images, but to put a price on it seems a little … unserious.
(Thanks to NPPA lawyer Mickey Osterreicher for the link.)
Had I been a little smarter when I was a shooter, I bet I could have convinced my bosses that they had to buy me Leica M rangefinders when they sent me to court. According to a Michael Zhang article at PetaPixel, several states use the Leicas as the standard for sound.
The video is kind of cool, but a little deceptive – the M7 sound is just the shutter tripping, while the digital Ms have the shutter firing and cocking, something that doesn’t happen on an analog M until you advance the film.
It’s odd that just a week after the Boston Police Department asked spectators to send in any photos they had from the timing of the marathon bombing that Churchill Downs, home of next month’s Kentucky Derby, has said no cameras with, “detachable lenses” will be allowed in.
They’ll say it’s a safety issue, I’ll say it’s a financial issue. They don’t want to hire more security to screen people coming in and they probably want to be able to sell more photos to you.
I try so hard not to be cynical, but then I fail … often.
The laws regarding our ability to make photographs in public places is pretty clear here in the United States. Across the ocean, though, the French are struggling to redefine privacy.
Former Boston University student Johannes Hirn shot a story several years ago about an immigrant who wanted to box his way into America. That immigrant was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two alleged bombers from the Boston Marathon.
I just hope the site the Boston University News Service is linking to has licensed those images …
(Thanks to Prof. Denise McGill for the link.)