[batista]

>If the caption to the picture reads "Buzz Aldrin as captured by Neil Armstrong", who cares?

I _effin_ care. E.g. I want a picture of Neil Armstrong for my article. Not a picture that _he_ took of somebody else. Not a quick sketch he did of his cat. I want a picture of HIM, preferably on the moon.

That he "took the picture" is meaningless for the purposes of _showing_ the man in action. If I was writing about Knuth I wouldn't post a picture of McCarthy he took and caption it "John McCarthy as captured by D. Knuth".

As someone who used to do photo editing for a newspaper, I assure you that this is Photo Editing 101. Your arguments are loco.

[justin66]

> I _effin_ care. E.g. I want a picture of Neil Armstrong for my article. Not a picture that _he_ took of somebody else. Not a quick sketch he did of his cat. I want a picture of HIM, preferably on the moon.

Neil is visible in the photo, in the reflection on Aldrin's visor. In this photo which he took while walking ON THE MOON. Which, if you take a step back and lose the journalistic tendentiousness, you will realize makes this about as cool as any picture ever taken.

[batista]

>Which, if you take a step back and lose the journalistic tendentiousness, you will realize makes this about as cool as any picture ever taken.

If I want to depict Neil Amstrong, the "coolness" of a picture showing some other guy does not come into play at all.

Isn't it obvious?

I mean, seriously, "as cool as any picture ever taken"? "visible on the reflection on the visor"?

[justin66]

The wide use of the photo over the years is proof enough that it's a great photo. People love it. With all due respect to the copy editing topic of the linked column, people don't care in the slightest about journalistic rule lawyering regarding the criteria that should be used for selecting photographs for a news article. They care about accuracy, which evidently isn't the same thing.

If there are any worries about misunderstanding, make sure the photo's caption is clear. To someone who isn't part of the Church of Photojournalism, it honestly seems very simple.

If you are concerned with "depicting Neil Armstrong" above all else you're not going to want a photo with his visor down in any case. But that makes excluding this photo seem every bit as stubborn as excluding a photo of a Saturn V rocket or something.

[potatolicious]

Thanks for trivializing an entire profession, and the healthy helping of weasel words - I was running low.

"Church of Photojournalism", "journalistic rule lawyering"?

Has it ever occurred to you that the journalistic standards surrounding photo manipulation may have actually been arrived at after a century of experience, rather than a bunch of tightasses obsessing over haughty principles, as you've so conveniently insinuated?

This is something that bothers me about HN regularly - we have such a strong tendency here to trivialize other people's jobs, to the point where anything that isn't immediate obvious to the layman must be idiocy of some sort.

> "To someone who isn't part of the Church of Photojournalism, it honestly seems very simple."

So the fact that tens of thousands of photojournalists over the course of an entire century have arrived at, and agreed upon, this set of rules for reportage means nothing. Clearly you, a lay person who has never been deeply exposed to photojournalism, you know better. It seems simple.

[justin66]

> Has it ever occurred to you that the journalistic standards surrounding photo manipulation may have actually been arrived at after a century of experience, rather than a bunch of tightasses obsessing over haughty principles, as you've so conveniently insinuated?

I think the standard rules of photojournalism are ordinarily probably very useful. If the comments of the guy I initially replied to are truly representative of the field (you haven't given any opinion here), it's IMO clearly not perfect.

> So the fact that tens of thousands of photojournalists over the course of an entire century have arrived at, and agreed upon, this set of rules for reportage means nothing.

Is there truly a consensus position on something this specific? Such that it would categorically be a mistake under the rules to use a (very good) photograph of Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon when the subject of the article is Neil Armstrong? In spite of the fact that walking on the moon is what Neil Armstrong is known for, and there are no proper pictures of him doing it, and a pic of Aldrin taken by Armstrong is the closest we're going to get?

I'm skeptical that the field's century of experience leads to such a clear and unambiguous conclusion.

[michaelt]

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is a great portrait but I wouldn't use it to illustrate Neil Armstrong's obituary because it's not Neil Armstrong.

[justin66]

The more relevant question is whether you'd be willing to use an image of it in an article about Leonardo?

[michaelt]

For an obituary for Leonardo I'd use a portrait of Leonardo.

I'll add a bit more nuance to that - people don't always read every word of a newspaper article. That's fine, it's why the inverted pyramid [0] model is used. If there's a big headline (Neil Armstrong Dies) and a single photo (the one of Buzz Aldrin) and the fact it's not a photo of Armstrong is in a little caption, it's going to contribute to the misconception that the photo of Aldrin is actually a photo of Armstrong.

Contributing to misconceptions is bad and should be avoided. Luckily this is easy - just use the photo of Armstrong in the lunar lander.

On the other hand, it's unlikely anyone would mistake Leonardo and the woman in the Mona Lisa so it wouldn't seem so bad to me!

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid

[jyap]

Find me a credible publication that will:

A) Use the mentioned picture as the centerpiece to their article.

B) State incorrectly that it is a picture of Neil Armstrong.

Neither is likely to happen. It is just a common misconception that it is a picture of Neil Armstrong since it is the most famous picture of the mission and because people know Neil Armstrong. People see the picture and assume it is Neil Armstrong. Credible publications won't use the picture.

The parent article makes out that there aren't many pictures of Neil Armstrong. They will most likely use the one mentioned taken by Buzz Aldrin or this one:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...

[lkbm]

The Atlantic doesn't state who it is, but Aldrin's name appears nowhere in the text: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/neil-arm...

[Hovertruck]

The file's name is also "Neil_armstrong.jpg"

[batista]

>Neither is likely to happen.

You'd be surprised. With the cost cutting of proof checking and editorial departments, and the rush to catch internet time news, I've seen much much worse misattributions and even hoaxes running around in respectable publications (far from only online ones).

[sp332]

From http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/images11.html#5903 here's an (analog, darkroom) reconstruction of the photo of Neil in Buzz's helmet. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.neil-mirror.jpg

[waterlesscloud]

Comparing the photo that Neil Armstrong took on THE MOON to a sketch of his cat is silly, and you know it.

Also, every single image you see of Saturn from Cassini has been manipulated. Almost every photo of Mars from Curiosity is manipulated. So what then?

[batista]

>Comparing the photo that Neil Armstrong took on THE MOON to a sketch of his cat is silly, and you know it.

Sure, but not much sillier that saying that putting up a picture of a different person is a "slight inaccuracy".

>Also, every single image you see of Saturn from Cassini has been manipulated. Almost every photo of Mars from Curiosity is manipulated. So what then?

Notice how I, unlike TFA, never said anything about manipulation? I only raised the issue that we DO care a lot, as photo editors (1), if it's a picture of Neil in the article or if it's a picture he took of Buzz.

But, since you ask, you show those images with an explicit notice that they are manipulated. If they were images of events with political aspects, war images, images or persons etc they would not be published manipulated, but in this case we are talking about essential manipulation (stitching, colour correction, move to the visible spectrum, etc), and not creative image doctoring like pasting some space or removing a person USSR style.

(1) And presumably as readers. You don't just put out some different image that one assumes from the article content and then except readers to check the caption (which they seldom do). All sorts of perception manipulation can be carried out that way.

[Karunamon]

>and not creative image doctoring like pasting some space or removing a person USSR style.

I can't possibly be the only person confused by the author's visceral reaction to pasting in a block of black above a photo, or slightly offended by your comparing it to USSR-esque person removal.

[DanBC]

It's a manipulation of the truth. By presenting that image as truth you have lied to the viewer. There are (or at least, should be) strict ethical controls on journalists to avoid lying to their readers. That's why quotes are what the interviewee actually said, and not what the journalist wanted them to say. And it's why pictures of events are what was actually captured by the camera, with minimal manipulation for publication, but without adding or removing stuff.

[Karunamon]

And what truth is that? There was nothing of any substance added or removed to the image, indeed adding the black only served to make it aesthetically appealing.

There's distortion of the truth, and then there's removing redeye from a picture. Which of these would you say this falls under?

[coin]

The OTS antenna on top of the helmet is clipped. Adding black sky doesn't restore it.

[DanBC]

The original image is fine. What is gained by faking the sky? Faking the sky, and adding a note to say that the sky has been faked, is fine.

Fixing red-eye is borderline and needs to be done carefully. Someone fixing red-eye and obscuring a coloboma has distorted the image, and distorted truth.

Can you really see no difference in fixing a photographic defect and adding in stuff that was not there?

Obviously it depends a bit on where the image is used, but I'd hope that any publication would list the changes made to a photograph.

[batista]

>And what truth is that? There was nothing of any substance added or removed to the image, indeed adding the black only served to make it aesthetically appealing.

The truth that if you make it "a little of this is OK", "a little of that is OK" people will abuse it. No manipulation is clear cut and KISS.

And making an image "aesthetically appealing" can have consequences of viewer manipulation. E.g making pictures of war prettier, or removing some things that don't make the frame pleasing but reveal stuff about the actual situation, etc etc.

Even this manipulation hides facts. E.g the fact that Neil couldn't operate the camera with precision -- so it can be used to show that the walk on the moon was easier or more "piece of cake" than it really was. (Remember that one major use of the moon mission was cold-war era PR for the US).

>here's distortion of the truth, and then there's removing redeye from a picture. Which of these would you say this falls under?

Even removing redeye from a picture would be frowned upon in newsrooms.

E.g What if the picture is of a drug abusing athlete, and the process shows his eyes more normal than they were?

[batista]

First, "the author's visceral reaction" is simple journalist ethics. They teach you that at journalist school. Doctored images are bad.

Second, noticed how I haven't mentioned NASA in my reply about doctored images? I gave some examples of the kind of things photo editors avoid. Nowhere I said, explicitly or implicitly, that NASA adding black was like a "USSR-esque person removal".

Also notice how I gave TWO examples? "like pasting some space or removing a person USSR style"? NASA did the first, USSR did the second. Where's the confusion?

I called both "creative image doctoring", but NOWHERE did I implied that what NASA did is equally morally outrageous as the second.

[Karunamon]

>NOWHERE did I implied that what NASA did is equally morally outrageous as the second.

No, but you compared something completely innocuous with something completely evil. I sincerely don't believe even did it on purpose, but it reads like a cheap appeal to emotion.. probably an implication you weren't trying to give off.

[ams6110]

As a "photo editor" did you demand that all photos be published full-frame with no compensation for exposure, or was cropping/enlarging/contrast adjustment allowed? I don't really see the difference, here. It's not like the substance of the image was changed. It's really just sort of a "negative" crop, or adding a wide black border to the top.

[philwelch]

Neil's still in the photo if you look closely at Aldrin's visor.