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Photography is an important tool in the hands of the journalist. It is perhaps this tool which is facing the best and worst effects of modern technology. Advancements in technology during the past four decades have made several cherished skills of the photographer irrelevant. Camera electronics has grown beyond helping him with exposure and focusing. It can now almost fully take over these functions and its dependability is very high. The camera would set for the photographer the best aperture and shutter speed combinations for almost any given situation with or without flash. It can also read the film speed automatically and do the settings accordingly.
It is only a matter of years before digital cameras are widely used by the photojournalists. It will free the photojournalist from dark room processing and time consuming manipulations with the enlarger. Wet processing is bound to become a thing of the past, if digital cameras achieve the resolution of films. This may happen any time now. Pictures would reach the newsroom from the photographer in a matter of seconds through telephone lines or wireless. The picture editor can do a quick adjustment of brightness and contrast besides cropping on the computer. And the picture would reach the page in a matter of minutes. If the editor has time, he can use an array of tools available on computer programs like PhotoShop, to improve the picture in many ways. The possibilities are endless.
A picture is worth a thousand words. This old saying will continue to be true. However, the credibility of the thousand words would now be held in doubt from the day you go in for computer manipulation of images. (It is inevitable that you will.) Some years back, I reported on a case of the Forest Department employing children for work in their nurseries near Kallar in Thiruvananthapuram district in violation of several laws. I had seen the children working, and the report was carried by THE HINDU which enjoyed a high degree of credibility. Despite that, the Forest Minister denied it on the floor of the Assembly. He said that the children were there with their mothers who were actually the ones working there. (The payments were being made in the name of their mothers.) Next day, we carried a follow up showing an overview of the nursery with the caption that no mothers were around. The children were seen working with shovels. Only two grown ups were amidst them. That was evidence which cannot be easily refuted. Even a newspaper with low credibility could use such a picture to prove its point. But the situation has changed now. If mothers are present in such a picture today, they could be easily edited out using latest image processing technology. The background can be changed and the number of children increased, if needed. The credibility of a picture will now dependent on the credibility of the newspaper and the photojournalist. In other words, the credibility of a photograph would be the same as that of the printed word. Thus, the profession losses the strength of one of its tools as capabilities of the tool are enlarged by modern technology.
Besides, the wide scope for manipulation of pictures now throws up several ethical issues. This would range from issues like whether an electric line in the foreground or a disturbing background could be edited out to whether one could change the appearance of a person. Many would countenance the editing out of a disturbing background or the like, but what about editing out distances or the like. Some time back, a newspaper published a picture of a policeman running after a few demonstrators with a lathi. The distance between the policeman and the `victims' was drastically cut through computer manipulations. This gave a better effect.
Instead of a picture of a policeman chasing away some demonstrators, it looked as if the policeman was about to hit one of them. Is this ethical? In the past also, use of telephoto lenses tended to shrink distances. This was something known to many and they could arrive at a correct assessment of the distances. However, now the situation has reached an unacceptable extreme. Unlike in the case of telephoto lenses, the reader may not be able to guess that the picture has been electronically manipulated. This is true of video footage also.
Similarly, photo finishing, including touching of the negatives, was used by photographers for many decades to improve portraits. Now, there is no limit to how far one can improve or damage a portrait. One can even strip a person of his or her cloths. Where would one set the limits?
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