Category Archives: Ethics

Online Symposium: Seeking Justice – Social Activism through Journalism & Documentary Practice

The Centre for Documentary Practice invites you to logon and join the world’s first online journalism and documentary conference on October 15th 2009, starting 12:01am (GMT) (That’s 8PM EST).
Speakers include Paul Fusco, Ed Kashi, Jodi Bieber, Marcus Bleasdale, Shahidul Alam, Gary Knight, Robin Hammond, Adam Ferguson, Travis Beard, Michael Coyne, Masaru Goto, Jack Picone, Megan [...]

Is Photo Manipulation Bad For Photography?

Grayson and Mike at Outside Magazine asked me to write an essay for their photography issue and we settled on the topic of photo manipulation. It’s certainly a hot button issue these days not only because of how easy it’s gotten to make realistic fakes but also because it’s gotten easier to publicly debate it [...]

The Ethics of Reviewing

Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer has a nice piece about the ethics of reviewing products (here).
I’ve been wondering—are the ethical requirements really the same for a personal blog as they are for a magazine? I’ve accepted a camera on extended loan lately for the the first time in my career, too. That is something [...]

NYTimes Reminds Freelance Photographers “No Unauthorized Alteration Of Photos”

I’m not familiar with how assignments are made at the NY Times Magazine, but it looks like this policy is a part of the contract photographers sign when they start working with “The Times.” This memo just went out (presumably in response to the Edgar Martins fiasco) to remind everyone to only submit unaltered images. [...]

Flashes Of Hope

Photographer Kevin Brusie sent me a link to this amazing organization (he started the Maine chapter last year):
“Flashes of Hope is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating powerful, uplifting portraits of children fighting cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.”
It’s all staffed by volunteer professional photographers and a donation (here) goes towards processing and framing of the [...]

NYTimes Magazine Pulls Photo Essay After Questions Of Digital Alteration Are Raised

The New York Times commissioned Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins to travel around the United States and take photographs of abandoned construction projects left in the wake of the housing and securities market collapse. They pulled the online piece (here) after questions were raised over on Metafilter (here). Initially everyone was happily debating the economy and [...]

Sad And Strange, Wired’s EIC Accused Of Plagiarism

Over the course of reading Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” for a review, The Virginia Quarterly Review discovers passages lifted from Wikipedia (here). The real irony here is that you wouldn’t be allowed to write for Wired if you ever used Wikipedia as a primary source.

Mark Seliger Rip Off

It appears that Mexico has its very own Mark Seliger… well, they have a photographer who bought Mark’s Physiognomy book and tried to knock-off many of the setups for Mexican television company Televisa’s book featuring their on-air talent. The photos were taken by Gabriel Saavedra.
This blogger (here) broke the story several months ago.
Obviously simply copying [...]

Ethics And Photography Discussion

Interesting conversation over on the NPR radio show On The Media (here) where host Bob Garfield talks with Martin Schoeller, Jill Greenberg, Platon and former DOP of Time Magazine Maryanne Golon about the ethics of portrait photography. It’s interesting because he’s looking for answers about the journalistic responsibility photographers have to subjects and viewers but [...]