The image we viewed on fridays class of Paul Hansens 2013 World Press photo winner of two Palestinian children, who had been killed by an Israeli missile strike along with their father, being carried to a mosque, and the controversy involving the post production editing of the photo to give it more light left me torn about the ethics of image manipulation. As someone who takes photos on a regular basis I can understand the difficulty to capture a photo that encapsulates all of the aesthetic qualities you are trying to achieve. Photography isn’t an objective medium, different photo settings used to take a photo can produce very different images, in terms of journalistic photography you have to leave it in the hands of the photographer to portray an accurate and relevant representation of the events or scene of the image. In the case of Paul Hanses photo the use of editing to add more light is used to reveal the dismay and anger in the faces of the group of men, in some ways this is creating a more accurate and relevant representation of the scene than if we could not see the expressions of the men. The above images are another example of photojournalistic controversy involving editing, they were taken by Adnan Hajj of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. The first image is the unedited version of the second, in this case the use of darkening the image and cloning the plumes of smoke and buildings is creating a blatant dishonest representation of the scene. This is also the case with the third image which was caption as showing an Israeli F-16 fighter jet firing ground-attack missiles “during an air strike on Nabatiyeh” whereby the missiles, which are actually defensive flares, have been cloned from originally being one to three. In my opinion the line in a photographic editing has been crossed when it goes from optimising and enhancing to altering and duplicating.
