You want National Geographic publish your photos?

[Desmond Chan]

In case some of you are interested, take a look at this:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/video/player?%2F%3FtitleID=your-shot-moments#/?titleID=your-shot-moments&catID=1

Anyone can do actually and, I think, probably with any camera, too, and so likely the it's not for the pros here :)

It seems to me what they're looking for is similar to what Popular Photography is.

However, from the Director of Photography of National Geographic :

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/manipulation

"I encourage you to submit photographs that are real. The world is already full of visual artifice, and we aren't running Your Shot to add to it. We want to see the world through your eyes, not the tools of Photoshop.

Please do not digitally enhance or alter your photographs (beyond the basics needed to achieve realistic color balance and sharpness). If you have digitally added or removed anything, please don't submit the shot. We look at every photo to see if it's authentic, and if we find that yours is in any way deceptive, we'll disqualify it..."

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Desmond

It is interesting NG chose to squeeze two pyramids together so they would fit as a vertical for the cover? Also had a cover shot in Poland manipulated, don't remember the circumstances but it involved a hat? and did make the image more compelling. Both were covers and no hint of what was done disclosed.

Maybe you learn from mistakes and now they would object to removing twig from an image .... not much common sense on both accounts.

[Juha Hytönen]

One interesting issue: if you remove twig, is the photo representing what you saw? It is very common argumentation, that you can alter the image if it better represent the time/situation when you took it. You live with your subjective memory and you might remember the twig or not.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

I dont think its a question of twig. If you allow twig removal, then why not X or Y. Its easier to do 'all or nothing' policy. Otherwise, its a can of worms....where to draw the line? I see lot of photo contests doing the same.
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[Alfred Forns]

Good points

I think its reasonable to walk up and remove a twig .. no argument from anyone there .. right? I just find the tough stance interesting in respect with what was done before.

I agree will probably never be a line drawn on how far you can go but at some times there should be some guidelines. It will never again be the equivalent of a straight slide out of a camera !!!

[Desmond Chan]

I just find the tough stance interesting in respect with what was done before.

Well, people change; magazine changes, too :)


It will never again be the equivalent of a straight slide out of a camera !!!I thought what NG was asking for was simply like what people did with slides: what you shoot is what you get?

In a way it's good, I think. It's back to the fundamentals: what you see and how you use your camera.

[Juha Hytönen]

Well, people change; magazine changes, too :)

I thought what NG was asking for was simply like what people did with slides: what you shoot is what you get?

In a way it's good, I think. It's back to the fundamentals: what you see and how you use your camera.


This is true for the 80% of photographers who did slides, there were also some of those who were capable of developing slides themselves and thus affecting the end result (sometimes quite heavily). And if I remember right, it was not so common to include developing methods with the represented photo as today it seems to be quite standard. So today at least it is kind of a common requirement to clarify the manipulation (because it is obvious that you can do photoshopping, even at the entry level).

I have seen the competition rules which requires the original raw picture to be send beside the corrected ones. This was not possible to do with slides because the actual competition photo was same time the original (but possible manipulated).

[Alfred Forns]

Desmond with digital is not the case and that is not what NG is asking ..... here you still have the "developing" which is needed and will make a difference. Now I would compare more to a negative being printed .. a little room.

Juha there was some manipulation you could do with slide film. I always processed my own but not as you might think. The most common change was altering the film speed. One other if you had a few rolls under the same conditions you could do a clip form the end of one of the rolls. This is to develop a few and then make minor adjustments to the rest by varying the developing time.

It was a little help but the playing field was a lot more even than now. I'm always eager to see how this develops (no pun intended) in the future since all things change and change there will be. If the technology is present it will be implemented .... but do remember the words of Ansel Adams .. cameras have advanced a lot with out improving !!!!

[Juha Hytönen]

Ok Alfred. I was never myself a slide film photographer. What I did was color film and b/w. I made my b/w developing up to the final paper. There was some room for even manipulation because we did our own film developing (e.g. pushing films) and also during paper exposure and wet processing. Majority of the color films were developed in the labs. But still I never mentioned about the developing methods. Nowadays I'll include at least some information with the photo (basic exposure info and cropping and color corrections).

In Finland there was a time 10-15 years ago (just in the dawn of digital photography) where one of our most recognized nature photographer was under suspection of manipulation in one of his published book. Without going in to the details (it was actually true and was made in the post processing), when one looks back those discussions it was one hectic fight. There were some people against the manipulation what so ever and others were defending this guy. But after this small public war the rest of the photographers got some widely recognized guidelines for modern photography. Obviously there are so called purists in photography (especially in the nature photography) everywhere, but they can co-exist with rest of us.

[Alfred Forns]

Juha One manipulation that comes to mind involves a black and white print from a mayor photographer. Sorry can't remember the name but maybe some can from the description of photo/incident.

The image in question shows a person very sick/dying and looking up at another then that person looks at a second which is looking at the sick. From the critiques the power of the image has to do with the eye viewing directions which make up a triangle.

When the person died and the negative was re printed .. it was different. He used potassium ferricyanide (Farmer's Reducer) to erase the pupil then he burned a new one in the direction he needed. This is big time digital manipulation before his time.

Instances like this I think were rare? Will research see if I can come up with the name of the person and image !!

[Ed Cordes]

Years ago I remember buying something called "photo opaque" or something like it to paint on negatives to block light and make white or grey areas depending on how heavily I applied it. I also remember using an Exacto knife to scrape a negative to remove a light area. I believe Ansel has told everyone at one time he added clouds to a Yosemite image from another negative. I think that now that the general public is more aware of what can be done with image manipulation it is spoken about more.

BTW, painters selectively add and subtract and distort elements all the time. No one complains about this!