Who said a photo never lies?

It’s an affront to readers and photographers alike when a newspaper or magazine uses photography to tell a lie. Such dishonesty ranges from publishing a picture that amounts to mild misrepresentation, through to running one that is itself entirely fake.

At the low-end of the scale are the file pictures pretending to be current, or those that are loosely captioned because they aren’t quite of the moment in time they should be, or the photograph of an isolated incident that doesn’t fairly represent the bigger picture but is published anyway because of its attention-grabbing charms.

What we thankfully see less of are examples from the high-end of the scale: the outright and unadulterated lie. But here’s one that is simply off the charts.

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How’s this for digital doctoring?

In Australia we tend to give our media an ample serving of skepticism – more than it deserves if you ask me. But an ethical atrocity like the one unearthed by Egyptian blogger Wael Khalil this week puts most others in the shade.

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Disaster and despair need not define us

Today we’re finishing the hanging of prints for a month-long exhibition of the Herald’s best photography from throughout the past year. Called Photos 1440, it’s one of four exhibitions that are part of Canon’s EOS Festival of Photography, and we’re quite thrilled that it’s going to be conducted alongside the Sydney leg of the World Press Photo exhibition world-tour.

With Photos 1440 and the Word Press Photo exhibitions occurring simultaneously in opposite wings of the State Library of New South Wales, the contrast between their respective works is all the more clear and it begs the question: why must World Press Photo be so bloody upsetting all of the time? It’s generally very worthy subject-matter I concede, but surely there’s more of that to be found than is for the most part confined to conflicts and generic misfortune, year after year after year?

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Political propaganda of the visual kind

When the PM travelled to Perth yesterday it was always going to be an opportunity for political theatre. The trip had been identified by mining industry strategists as a key moment in their public campaign against his government’s proposed new “super profits” tax and Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest lead a TV ambush as good as any.

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When a picture seems too good to be true

Like a lot of things in life ethical journalism only gets public attention for its absence. The high standards of the majority of practitioners would possibly shock a lot of people because — again — like a lot of things in life more of the bad gets reported than the good, and this tends to overstate the existence of the problem.

When Reuters moved pictures on Friday of volcanic ash from the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland and the consequent disruptions to air travellers that this caused world-wide, one picture stood out from all of the others — so much so it was the clear choice for our coverage in the Herald. Well, we wanted it to be but something about it didn’t seem quite right.

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Photo-phobia and its unintended consequences

Pardon my focus on the Brits of late but they’ve been dealing with a couple of issues that we shouldn’t underestimate the possibility of facing here one day. The Orphan Works legislation may have only just been defeated, but an equally great threat might be just over the horizon.

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Orphan Works Bill is the copyright thief’s get out of jail free card

It appears increasingly likely that Britain will pass into law The Digital Economy Bill 2009-2010 which contains an “orphan works” provision similar to what the Americans faced last year.

Orphan works encompass photographs or other types of intellectual property where, for whatever reason, the original creator cannot be found. The Digital Economy Bill seeks to implement a mechanism whereby publications can go ahead and use them anyway without having received the necessary authority to do so from the copyright holder.

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Photography and the Parliament: the rules are an ass

Federal MP Peter Slipper was caught snoozing in the House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago. He was photographed by one of his colleagues on their Blackberry. Slipper, who insists he was just resting his eyes, complained to the Speaker who instigated the inevitable inquiry.

It was a bit unfortunate that this coincided with an address to Parliament by the visiting Indonesian head of state, but if I had to endure the sort of workload our MPs seem to I’d be pretty tired too, I guess.

When the picture was published in a Queensland newspaper a few days later, Slipper wasn’t a happy camper and he told the house he wanted the culprit found.

“I also imagine, Mr Speaker, that it makes it difficult for you to discipline members of the press gallery who might be inclined to breach the rules on photography,” Slipper said.

Whoever did it, they’re in good company because the rules controlling photography in the Federal Parliament are so restrictive they are breached almost as often as anything seriously newsworthy needs to be photographed in that place.

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