Posted on 08/29/2006 11:29:15 AM PDT by Derfla5
The NY times published a photo the other day which looked like they had airbrushed out a "microphone" which significantly changed the meaning of the photo. I wrote the following letter to their corrections department.
The NY Times responded by sending me the photographers explanation which follows in the body of the comment below.
"Dear editor:
I think you owe your readers a correction and an apology for the altered picture on August 27, 2006 at http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/08/27/world/27morale2.html which suggestively led your readers to believe that it showed a "stripper" beginning her "strip" to entertain our troops. That is a misrepresentation. It is obvious that you airbrushed the microphone stand and mike out of the picture. You forgot to airbrush the cord the mike was attached to otherwise we would have believed what we were seeing was true.
The actual truth the "unaltered" picture with mike/stand would have told us was that it portrayed a female entertainer either talking or singing to the troops. Since "strippers" don't perform with microphones and stands on their stage, none of your readers would have thought that she was a stripper. But that "truth" would not have supported the salacious story you were trying to sell.
The fact you would have to misrepresent the image in the story makes the entire article highly suspect as to its truthfulness or impartiality. It adds more damage to the already damaged credibility of the once great NY Times. I suggest you publish a correction, apology and an unaltered photo ASAP.
Sincerely,"
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Thanks for writing. The picture is not altered. I have pasted below an explanation from the photographer who took the picture.
Sincerely, Joe Plambeck Office of the Public Editor The New York Times
Note: The public editor's opinions are his own and do not represent those of The New York Times.
----
I did not modify this picture in any way.
If you look carefully at the frame, you will see a slightly wide band of dark area that runs from the head of a marine with dark hair in the back row up to the singer. Look carefully at the wall from that marine's head up to the top of the frame and you will see the blurred cable that was in motion because the dancer was moving it as she spoke to the marines. The full cable is in the shot but is blurred. The reason it isn't sharp is because the frame was shot at 1/6 of a second in a room that was dark. The flash filled in the frame but wasn't the main light, the room light provided the main light for the frame. The long exposure balanced the light from the strobe on my camera with the ambient light in the room. The cable was moving as was the singer and the marines. If you look carefully at the frame, you'll see that nothing in the frame is tack/crisp sharp. I looked in the paper that I got out here and know that the reproduction left the wire virtually invisible.
The reason the cable on the platform is readable is because that length of cable wasn't moving. The dancer's body wasn't moving alot but her upper body was moving enough to blur the cable in the shot. Had the dancer not been moving ( or had I shot with a higher shutter speed which would have presented a whole other set of issues) the cable would have been sharp at that point. I chose to shoot this way because I didn't want the picture to have the look that a direct flash frame shot at high speed would have had (the dancer would have been lit and the rest of the frame would have been completely dark).
I wanted to picture to look like the performance actually appeared instead of like a moment frozen with just a enough light on the performer to illuminate her and not the rest of the frame. I wish I could have set the room with lots of lights to evenly illuminate it but I had only the strobe gear (one 580) that I carried in my bag. It wasn't nearly enough to properly light the room. There were no spot lights of any sort on the stage, just a few florescent lights in the ceiling of a room that was probably 30-40 feet tall and approximately the size of a gym.
I can understand how a reader might look at this and conclude what these readers concluded but absolutely no modification, manipulation or photoshop tricks took place on this or any other images I shot. "
No stripper? Too bad.
Could you please post the pic?
I wouldn't really have a problem with strippers performing for the troops anyway, but that's just me.
Bovine excrement. I can see the shadow on the wall!!! LIES! MENTIDAS!
It's not a doctored photo. Sorry, folks, but somebody has done a "ready, fire, aim", and made the NYT look good in the process.
looks like an honest answer to me.
Hot Air and Little Green Footballs both had this pic up and commented on it. It looks weird, but the explanation makes sense; the "disappearing" microphone cord is actually motion-blurred and very hard to see.
I realize that the whole Reuters/MSM fauxtography scandal has got us all hypersensitive about media picture manipulation, but now I think we (meaning conservatives) are in danger of going overboard and jumping on every tiny irregularity in a picture as being evidence of a conspiracy, when really most of them can be explained away. And that plays right into the hands of those that want to portray conservatives are paranoid tinfoil-hatters. We need to pick our fights better.
}:-)4
Click on the title of the thread to get the photo
There was a cord in the picture?
To doubt the explanation, you'd have to come up with a reason somebody would alter the picture in such an obvious way, and what it got them.
Nice set of legs...
I did not think it was photoshopped out because the guy behind the cord in the back of the room is totally visible; if this was photoshopped out they would have had to draw his face.
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