First Lecture for 2021 "Truth in Photography" by Jim Crew

To start off 2021 with a bang, we were fortunate to have another of Jim Crew’s thoughtful presentations via Zoom. The topic was “Truth in Photography” and Jim took us through all of the areas where the content of the image can be influenced by the photographer or the editing process. Sometimes the bias in the image is totally unconscious, however it can also be part of the photrographer’s desire to tell a particular story be portraying the event or situation in a particular way. Sometimes the editor (of the publication) can crop an image to tell a totally different story.

Jim took us through some history to show some famous “fake news” photographs (such as this image of General Robert E Lee in the American Civil War) as well as others where a small amount of editing (such as removing a distracting pole) was carried out and the resulting image declared “fake”. News agencies have strict rules regarding the editing of photographs, limiting the processing to minor tone and colour corrections, but excluding commonsense things like red eye removal. Another question to ponder is, does in camera processing to a JPEG constitute “manipulation” and if so, is it acceptable? There are many questions and very few answers, including why do we believe that somehow the \camera is a perfect observer and that the image captured should not be processed?.

There are so many opportunities for the image to be affected by choices such as framing, lens choice, timing and viewpoint that it is impossible to daclare any image to be 100% “True”. Jim quoted the famous photographer Richard Avedon is saying “All photographs are accurate, none of them is the truth” to illustrate this point. Another way to say this might be that “Photos don’t lie, but photographers do”.

The presentation was followed by some lively comments and discussion amongst the members.