Furore over award-winning photo

[Bear Dale]

Interesting read -


http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/d...515-2jlsl.html

[JM Tran]

I think this photo is fine, would be very hard to form a composite image from a few, especially when the subjects are moving and not in a linear manner.

[Warus]

Just my thoughts but it's essentially a HDR image as he re-worked several different versions of the RAW and blended them to create a larger dynamic range and it does show with unrealistic range through the photo. The question for me is "is this acceptable editing as defined by the rules of the competition?" Most seem to suggest only basic colour correction and dodging and burning is allowed. Were other images submitted allowed the same latitude when it comes to editing the images? Did the photographers entering the competition know that would be allowed? The image is powerful enough to win on it's own merit and I accept it's a single image but is it fair? Don't know.

[Steve Axford]

I think it would be quite possible to do, if you had taken a lot of photos, and you had a bit of luck with positions.. It's good that they checked it all out and found it was ok

p.s. I doubt that we're talking HDR here. That would be very hard and probably wouldn't work.

[JM Tran]

I dont even think HDR is possible, as there is a lot of movement from different ppl and the resulting output wouldnt match up well. Nothing wrong with lifting shadows and using tonal contrast as I suspect he did.

[dt86vyss]

I dont even think HDR is possible, as there is a lot of movement from different ppl and the resulting output wouldnt match up well. Nothing wrong with lifting shadows and using tonal contrast as I suspect he did.

Probably HDR with multiple images exported out of the one shot. Easy to do in LR

[fess67]

Certainly sounds like he applied a HDR approach to it. Easy to do a psuedo HDR from the RAW file by increasing or decreasing exposure, white point, black point, shadows, highlights.

I think it is a great photo and if his explanation of the process and the competitions scrutiny say it is within the rules then it should stand.

[Warus]

Exactly. HDR does not mean you need to use mutiple different shots of different exposures. To me it means you extend the dynamic range of the image beyond what the single shot was capable of and when shooting RAW you can easily push out several different exposure level images of the exact same image and then blend them together either manually or by wizardry.

[Rattus79]

You could do the same thing with a single negative and some creative dodging, burning, and some masking.

I see no problems here.

[Pixley]

I also think it is an incredibly moving photo!

[Steve Axford]

Exactly. HDR does not mean you need to use mutiple different shots of different exposures.

I think that's exactly what HDR does mean. When you a "single shot HDR" it isn't really HDR at all. It just gets the maximum dynamic range out of your single RAW file, at the loss of some colour information. Even if he managed to use real HDR (which is very hard with a fast moving subject), that would be perfectly ok for most comps, even journalist ones.

[Dylan & Marianne]

What do you guys think of the controversy surrounding the 2013 winner?
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...with-photoshop

The winning photographer admitted to reprocessing different versions of the original RAW file to achieve the final outcome
Is this worthy of disqualification?
Coming from a landscape photographer perspective, I can't see the problem - the message is conveyed in the RAW, the message is conveyed probably stronger with some post processing but how much is allowable in the genre?

[kiwi]

It's ridiculous and the blogger should get sued

[Dylan & Marianne]

oops I just realised Jim had a thread about this!

[Dylan & Marianne]

I agree with Steve - you could reexport the same file over and over again , or you could apply differing levels to duplicated layers on the same file and achieve the same thing - Even if he had managed to do a real HDR with subjects that stayed still for him, as long as the subject matter was the same, I wouldn't see what the problem would be (but then , I'm not a photojournalist). Likewise, if he had taken this shot with a GND hand held to minimise sky highlights, people would have questioned the image (as many questioned a portrait image of Kah Kit Yoong's from Carnivale) . I get the impression that just because manipulation was done in the field in the case of using a GND, it would somehow be OK rather than the lighting adjusted in post.

[JM Tran]

Exactly. HDR does not mean you need to use mutiple different shots of different exposures. To me it means you extend the dynamic range of the image beyond what the single shot was capable of and when shooting RAW you can easily push out several different exposure level images of the exact same image and then blend them together either manually or by wizardry.

What Steve said above, HDR needs to come from usually 3 or more to blend diff exposures together, creating different exposed ouputs from 1 image/raw file is not the same.

[Rattus79]

I said it in the other thread before, but I work with idiots, and am not adverse to repeating myself

The artist did not do anything that could not be done with film.

[Kym]

Threads merged

[arthurking83]

I think if it's from a single image, then there's no issue in recovering as much of the information available in the raw file .. as long as no other pixel deformation/contrivance has been done to alter the actual substance of the image.

But from my understanding of(not experience with) photoshop, is that this could easily be done as a multi image HDR.
One shot for the people/laneway which requires more exposure, and one shot for the background/sky which requires much less exposure.
Irrespective of whether the people are moving in relation to the sky, it's not important to mix those two elements in a HDR/blended image.
The manner in which photoshop can blend the sky/background(if I understand it correctly) should present no issue to the manipulator.
The dynamic range within the mass of people and the innards of the laneway, all seem to be within the ability of any decent camera .. just that the exposure requirement may have been low compared to the sky.

The sky looks to be heavily recovered anyhow, and the shade of blue it depicts looks unnatural and contrived.
So it looks exactly as tho it was just a simple heavy recovery job from a single image.


While the image depicts a very sombre and important social story, I can't see how it got voted as world press photograph of the year .. it looks too cartoony to begin with.
While it has a great look about it, it looks nothing like a new photograph, and more of a social documentary/artistic/gallery type image.

The shadowing on the faces of the people looks ridiculous to begin with, and is in opposition to the shadowing on the buildings.
The processing on guy at the far left just looks plain silly, with the light source coming at him from the LHS, yet the sun is obviously on the RHS of the frame.
The grey buliding wall won't reflect enough light to cast that kind of strong shadowing on his face, and of any external lighting was used(which apparently was not anyhow), it'd have to be placed right at the wall where there is some kind of doorbell or something like that.

Not an image of news as per the expected type that we usually see .. it's more of an art gallery type impressionist rendering. Definitely not a worthy World PRESS image candidate, let alone a winner IMO.

[Mat]

Threads merged

Careful Kim it might be disqualified as a thread...

HDR is a meathod to increase the dynamic range to more than that can be captured in the one shot. A reprocess of the same RAW file is not an HDR as there has not been any more recored information form the original capture. so to have an HDR you need to have 2 or more images capture at different exposures. Just pushing a single RAW image is more Tone Mapping.