The Ethics of Photography

[markdphotography]

Came across this article on the web the other day and although it was specifically about landscape, it does have a wider discussion area. Some interesting points made in it and like most articles - some I agree with and some I disagree with. I certainly agree we should not damage the environment or the landscape that we capture in any way although removing/moving a dead branch or fallen leaf, litter is not damaging it but is it ethical?
http://www.markd.photography/the-eth...e-photography/

I don't agree with concept that adding a leaf or removing a dead branch is deceiving my viewers. It is no different to choosing the right lens or aperture as some photographers have already pointed out in the comments after the original post. Photography is art and whether it is nature, landscape, bird, portrait or tabletop photography, the artist (photographer) applies his artistic interpretation of the scene. With the ready availability of post production editing, I believe that most landscape photographs are "not real" - after all what is real? On saying that I would never go as far as cutting down a tree to improve the captured image. Most landscapes that I have seen are not the pristine perfectly composed images are mother nature has no concept of composition. IN the film days you either removed these items before exposure or they were cast in emulsion for the life of the negative/slide.


If Spencer's article intention was to create some thought and discussion about the subject - it has certainly achieved that and it made me think which can only be a good thing. Thought I would pass it on for other togs to think about and comment.

[jim]

Interesting article. I agree with every word, while at the same time think he's pretty much pissing in the wind.

[ricktas]

He kinda lost me at the 'do no harm' rule. If you are in a wilderness you can do harm simply by walking there. Underfoot at often tiny creatures (insects), and small plants (eg moss), that treading on can leave them either dead or close to it.

The 'do no harm' is part of the Hippocratic oath, that doctors no longer have to swear.

He talks about moving leaves or ice into a position for a good composition, but then says he does not do that anymore. So somewhere along the way, his moral view changed and suddenly he expects everyone else to do the same? You can bet that 20 years ago a photographer was lamenting the same, yet Mr Cox saw no reason twenty years ago to change his then view. But suddenly, because he has changed his view, he thinks everyone else should too? Oh the arrogance and grandiose self-importance you display Mr Cox.

What next ?? He will be lamenting his complete ignorance of abstract photography and how everyone should give up doing abstracts as he does not understand them!

Calling out other photographers for their choices, when he himself has admitted to doing the same things 'in the past'.

He makes good points, but he lost me with his opinion that his moral view is better than mine, or anyone elses. If he wants to 'not deceive his viewers' all well and good, but how dare he assume that I or my viewers see it as a deception in the first place. I am happy to admit that I have placed driftwood on a beach, removed a leaf, removed human garbage from a scene before I shot it.

My Cox would do well to remember he doth not create the rules!

[jim]

The only things he suggests others should do are "don’t cause lasting damage to the landscape, and don’t wilfully deceive your viewers." By which he appears to mean you should be willing to tell people what changes you've made to a scene in order to create your photo. I find it hard to see anything much wrong with these suggestions.

All that stuff about not moving leaves and so on are presented as personal choices he has made about his own photography, and effectively defended on that level.

[markdphotography]

Interesting article. I agree with every word, while at the same time think he's pretty much pissing in the wind.

Not sure that I agree with every word but some valid points were made. I think his objective was to get some photographers to adjust their moral compass, some will and some will not, some will need their ethics adjusted and some will not.

The part that is interesting (even reading the info in the replies) is that so many read the article and formed different opinions after reading the same article and we wonder why people see photography is different ways when it is less literal or defined.

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He kinda lost me at the 'do no harm' rule. If you are in a wilderness you can do harm simply by walking there. Underfoot at often tiny creatures (insects), and small plants (eg moss), that treading on can leave them either dead or close to it.

...................................................

My Cox would do well to remember he doth not create the rules!

I respect your opinion and your views on the article Rick but see it differently. On saying that I also accept that just living on the planet is destroying it. I prefer the approach of most things in moderation, so I do my bit here and there and that applies to both photography and life. I certainly have moved leaves and dead branches as I stated, even walked of a defined track if I have seen some fungi but watched where I walk.

The two thiings I get out of this are:

1: the pursuit of the perfect image with no flaws and perfect composition - a product of digital photography I feel
2: the popularity of the super saturated pristine landscape that some need to blow up to hang on their walls in a city

Certainly an interesting point of view - like most images.

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The only things he suggests others should do are "don’t cause lasting damage to the landscape, and don’t wilfully deceive your viewers." By which he appears to mean you should be willing to tell people what changes you've made to a scene in order to create your photo. I find it hard to see anything much wrong with these suggestions.

All that stuff about not moving leaves and so on are presented as personal choices he has made about his own photography, and effectively defended on that level.

I do have a tendency to read, assess and decide so for me I tend to agree with you jim

[ricktas]

I respect your opinion and your views on the article Rick but see it differently.

I was hoping someone would post something like that.

I agree, respect others views. The issue I have with Mr Cox is that he is saying we should all tell viewers if we removed something, or added something. That is not respecting others views. He is telling us what we should do, like it is some rule.

I am not disagreeing with his opinions, but on his belief that we should all adhere to his requirement that we tell everyone what we might have removed or added to a scene. As photographers we are each quite capable of doing whatever we want, we do not need Mr Cox telling us what is acceptable.

[markdphotography]

I was hoping someone would post something like that.

I agree, respect others views. The issue I have with Mr Cox is that he is saying we should all tell viewers if we removed something, or added something. That is not respecting others views. He is telling us what we should do, like it is some rule.

I am not disagreeing with his opinions, but on his belief that we should all adhere to his requirement that we tell everyone what we might have removed or added to a scene. As photographers we are each quite capable of doing whatever we want, we do not need Mr Cox telling us what is acceptable.

That certainly is not practical to add that sort of information to each photo and most viewers would not be interested. That may be Mr Cox's intention although if you read some of his replies to the post he does not seem to be promoting that POV. It did make me think if I have crossed the line and I have no doubt it depends on who draws the line but it did make when reading it and it will make me think when taking images in the future.

It also made me think about the many times when a photographer was asked about the image and the replies comes "little or no post processing" but no mention of the pre exposure setting up.

In some instances I have made comment about that strategically placed leaf moved from another spot in the stream when it appears obvious and especially if someone asks - I guess another point is people don't ask that just make assumptions..

I am always amazed by these photographs of pristine perfectly composed landscapes that do not have one thing out of place and have tags about "no post exposure editing" and must be captured by a new style of camera.

[Tannin]

I think you can see this as akin to literature. Imagine that instead of a camera your tool of choice was a typewriter. Given the choice, would you be writing fact or fiction?

The writer takes the view that photography (at its best) is as factual as possible. Others take the view that it's a form of fiction. That's fine, we all have different views, and a good thing too.

Me, I don't mind fictional photography at all. It's a perfectly valid thing to do, though I seldom not care for it either to look at or to make. I don't much care for rugby or chess or wine or many kinds of music either, but that's OK too. We all have different likes and interests. But I have an intense dislike of photography which sets out to tell lies about the natural world by pretending fiction is fact so as to delude people. Fiction is fine but I hate lies. They are completely different things.

But it's very hard to tell the difference sometimes, and it is often a matter of degree. It is so, so easy to bend things a little bit: to place a leaf, to clone out a stick, saturate a sunset, air-brush away a blemish, whiten someone's teeth ..... where do you stop? There is no golden rule, you just have to make the best judgments you can according to your own conscience. The key it seems to me is to be true to the spirit of the truth of your subject.

This is why I have never been able to take decent pictures of a place which is strange to me. Until I've been in a district for long enough to have some understanding of it - this can be days or much much longer depending on how different it is to places I know already - I can't photograph it. It's disrespectful, and the results are never any good. I imagine portrait painters (even ones as bad at portraits as I am at landscapes) don't pick up a brush until they have got to know their subject either.

Would I sneer at someone who produces technically perfect, airbrushed, filtered, saturated, visually faultless photographs which glamourise the subject unrealistically and leave me cold?

Certainly not! I wouldn't dream of it.

(I usually just laugh and point.)

[ricktas]

Agree Tony, though rarely do you see an author attempt to pass their fiction off as non-fiction. Which I guess is the gist of what Mr Cox is saying.

But I also do not think Mr Cox gets to set the rules that the rest of us have to play by. And that is my concern with his approach. He wants all photographers to do as he says. Which makes me wonder who died and made him the photography rule god. And truly they are not really rules anyway, more a personal moral or ethical decision, that each of us is quite capable of making, without Mr Cox telling us where we should stand on editing and disclosure.

[Mark L]

I'm glad the article was about landscape photography.
I hope Mr Cox doesn't take up bird photography. He will just end up being disappointed and going back to landscapes.

I will know go and remove all the perches I have placed around our local wetlands that weren't placed there by nature. The birds use them now though, which is why I did it.

[Hamster]

Oh my goodness. He moved a leaf in his misspent youth and now repents. Most of the time it's the viewers own assumptions that lead them to feel mislead when something different turns out to be the case. Unless the photographer has said, this scene is exactly as found and is presented as such (and here are another 50 of varying angles to you can see I haven't missed anything important out), then don't assume that is the case, and you won't have to feel misled.
For the record, don't assume any of my photos document your reality.

[markdphotography]

Mark L

It could well have been about bird photography. I remember the case of a local bird of prey photographer up here that had some fantastic shots of sea eagles with fish in their tallons, water drops splashing, wings fully stretched, clean backgrounds. Everyone marvelled at the work and how spectacular it was and he was asked to show more of his work. After a while people started to ask questions on the web and at functions where he did presentations. He did not give much away but stories came out that he used a canoe to row out on a local lake with his camera and captured the bird in flight. The tog was not very forthcoming on the other detail of that he threw dead fish in the lake and positioned himsellf to catch the action until someone noticed that one image the fish was upside down indicating it was dead when taken by the bird. Photography is such a visual art and good photographers try to make the image look natural and realistic.

In essence the same rules could apply to bird photography?

The part that is not told in most photographs is the planning, research, time and effort to get an image and the perfection that some togs go to get that 1 image. I had a freind (who introduced me to photography that has now passed away) and one of his passions was bird photography (probably why I don't take many bird shots). He was a large person (around 130 kgs) and would walk through the forest looking for bird nest after studying the habitat of the bird. Find a nest, set up a ladder with guy wires and a dummy wood camera at the top so the bird got used to it. He would also set up a hide using a wool bale and 4 star pickets. Once the bird got used to the dummy camera he would replace it with his Pentax LX, sit in the hide for hours with binoculars and with a cable release capture the images on slide film (well before digital). He was very good and entered amateur comps and was rated in the top 10 in the world based on his results. Unfortunately on one of those outings he was bitten by a white spider which curtailed his bird photography due to the septic bite sight.

The reason for the long story is that no one questioned his process as they could see the results on a slide (impossible to edit easily) but the digital evolution has changed all that and people still treat a photograph as an accurate record of a place and time.

Alex
All valid pooints and not anissue for you and me but perception is reality to a lot of people. They still believe that what they see is real. I don't think there is a solution to this but it is something to be mindful about as ethics is only generally discussed when it has been broken. Talking about this may help others with personal ethical dilemmas.

[Lance B]

Hmm. I disagree about the Sea Eagle and the dead fish being staged and therefore wrong and that he needed to admit that he planted the fish. The fact is, the Eagle still got the fish and the photos were still the action of the Eagle getting the fish, regardless of whether the fish was planted or not. Don't forget, Sea Eagles will also grab a dead fish in the wild as well so, it's not out of the ordinary that this would happen. So, I see no problem with what the guy did at all and he does not need to admit to anything in this case as it's about capturing the action and capturing the Eagle, not whether the fish was dead or not. At the end of the day, Sea Eagles capture fish all the time and how that was achieved for the photo is irrelevant. Basically, you are saying that unless the guy stakes out an area for days if not weeks on end to hopefully be in the right place at the right time to get a Sea Eagle capturing a fish then it can't be acceptable? The chances of being at the right place at the right time/right light/right angle/close enough to get that action would have to be measured in the thousands to one. All he is doing is speeding up the process, I see no issue with that. It is the end result that is important, not how it was done.

Throwing a few seeds to attract some seed eating birds is OK with me as well. It's just hurrying up the process of getting a photo that may have taken months to get in the natural environment. I think you'll find that many of the best photographs of many birds have used enticements of some sort or whatever. Even the fact of using a bird hide could be construed as introducing an unnatural way of getting the photo if you want to take it to the nth degree. Again, it's the result that matters, not how you got there.

I think the problem is that some seem to want photography to be purely about a completely factual record as if it is some sort of forensic proof of the scene or event and some think that photography is completely all about art. If it is about a crime or proof of an event, then yes it needs to be an unaltered photo, but isn't that for police forensics, surveillance and journalism etc? On the other side of the coin, I see no problem with altering a landscape to make it look good because, at the end of the day, isn't that what we are trying to achieve, a great *photo*, not necessarily a forensic record of a scene? I also see no need to have to admit to what you did to achieve that photo because that is part of the photographers ability. I also do not think that actual taking of the photo is the be-all-and-end-all of photography, as the digital "dark room" is also just as important as the film dark room was in the days of film. Some would be surprised as to how much manipulation went on by the top photographers in the dark room in the days of film. However, we must remember that they had to "get it right" in the camera in the film days as they had less ability to do it in the dark room compared to the digital era. Whatever the case, it is the end result that is the most important thing not how it was done and that applies in film as it does in digital photography.

As for affecting nature whilst taking photos. My personal view is to avoid any destruction or harm of flora and fauna as best you can. Unfortunately, much of the time you cannot avoid treading on plants etc when traversing certain areas, but I think we just need to be cautious and do as little harm as possible. Let's not forget that larger animals also go about their day treading on plants etc. Not only that, but they eat plants and other animals and thus have an impact on the landscape - kangaroos etc defoliating complete areas of vegetation etc. Humans are part of the system, we are not aliens.

[feathers]

Agree with your thoughts Lance Cheers.

[ricktas]

They still believe that what they see is real. I don't think there is a solution to this but it is something to be mindful about as ethics is only generally discussed when it has been broken. Talking about this may help others with personal ethical dilemmas.

The problem with this is that ethics and morals are not a set standard that apply to everyone, or often even a small group of people. Everyone has their own personal moral beliefs and ethical principles. In many cases they can align with others, but when they do not, one view is not necessarily the right one, simply because more people believe it, or the dominant group, or individual hold that belief.

People should be free to express their moral or ethical belief. The issue happens when people like Mr Cox, start telling everyone else that their viewpoint is wrong and they should do as he says. This attempted suppression of others beliefs is not beneficial and can actually be harmful.

As @Lance B; stated above, this is not forensics. This is photography as Art. Tell me another form of Art where illusion and manipulation do not come into play, to affect the audience or viewer? Mr Cox is of the wrong opinion.. in my opinion.

[John King]

Thanks for this link, Mark.

While I tend to agree with the author, how long did it take him to come to some understanding of our ethical and moral responsibility towards the planet, our fellow denizens and his audience?

Most of us have these things worked out before we leave our twenties IMO.

His reasoning is why I only very rarely edit my photographs, but reserve the right to arrange myself around the subject and choose my lens (etc) to represent my view of it. Visual communication ...

We should all treat each other, and our entire environment, with dignity, courtesy and respect - and ethically, of course.

[jim]

It's kind of interesting how different people will read the same passage and see entirely different things.

I read the article as almost bending over backwards not to be prescriptive (except about things like not doing lasting harm to the environment in pursuit of a photograph, which I would have guessed would be mostly uncontroversial) and not to offend people who see things differently. In fact I even thought he might have been more vigorous in defending his personal approach, which I think is grounded in an attempt to capture, rather more than to create, and which I personally tend to share.

I honestly didn't see any attempt to suppress anyone else's beliefs, nor to tell everyone else that their viewpoint is wrong.

I figure writing about this stuff is tricky. Having read quite a bit by Spencer Cox, I've generally perceived him as a reasonable and pleasant fellow. Is this colouring my perception of what he wrote?

[Tannin]

Cheers Rick. But who says it's not forensics? That's just an opinion. Others may (and in fact do) disagree. It is every bit as much an attempted suppression of beliefs to say "anything goes and that's the way it should be" as it is to say what Mr Cox says.

Put it this way:

Donald Trump meets up with Miranda Kerr to open a new luxury marina. They tour it in a small boat. Just at the wrong moment, a freak wave comes along. Trump is washed overboard, soaking his expensive suit and rinsing the orange dye out of his hair. He will probably drown if you don't jump in to rescue him. Meanwhile, Miranda Kerr manages to keep her feet but suffers an unexpected and very revealing wardrobe malfunction. You are the only photographer there. What is the correct thing in this circumstance?

[ricktas]

Cheers Rick. But who says it's not forensics? That's just an opinion. Others may (and in fact do) disagree. It is every bit as much an attempted suppression of beliefs to say "anything goes and that's the way it should be" as it is to say what Mr Cox says.

Put it this way:

Donald Trump meets up with Miranda Kerr to open a new luxury marina. They tour it in a small boat. Just at the wrong moment, a freak wave comes along. Trump is washed overboard, soaking his expensive suit and rinsing the orange dye out of his hair. He will probably drown if you don't jump in to rescue him. Meanwhile, Miranda Kerr manages to keep her feet but suffers an unexpected and very revealing wardrobe malfunction. You are the only photographer there. What is the correct thing in this circumstance?

There is no correct thing... it is whatever the photographer decides. What Mr Cox might decide to do, is place a leaf over Miranda's bits.. and then tell everyone he did it. But that does not make his way the only way.

[Tannin]

But there is a correct thing! It's f/8 at 1/500th!