Blogging Addiction

The New York Times has an interesting article today about an "over blogger." It is a long article to read, but it does show an interesting but sad side to blogging.

The internet is a big place. I use Google Analytics to track the number of hits to my blog and my webpage and where they come from. It amazes me that so many of the hits come from new people. I have to wonder how do they find me. I definitely do make posts and then publicize them when I think I have information worth sharing. So I know where some of my readers come from.

My blogs are vastly different from the writer of the article. I hope that I have useful information - things that will help people either in their photography or their spiritual lives. I hope that I find things that will be interesting, entertaining, or inspiring. I want my blog to touch people's lives in a way that makes life richer, fuller, happier, and more spiritual.

I am also hopeful to be a professional Christian writer, motivational speaker, and professional photographer. I want my blog to be part of my "platform" that will become a readership when my first book (whether Christian or photographic) gets published.

I think that sometimes we need to share things that are going on in our lives - when what we experience and how we deal with it can help someone else going through the same situation.

But I also read several discussion forums and it is amazing that on the internet things that I take for granted like politeness and civility become lost. People will say things so much more viciously on the internet to people they have never met in person. Internet posts don't give you the body language or facial expressions so what seems like an innocuous remark gets misinterpreted and produces anger and ill will where none may have been intended.

There are so many outlets these days as well - My Space, Facebook, Blogger, Live Journal, Twitter. While it may be very important psychologically to express our feelings about the things that happen in our lives, sometimes putting them out there in public can have consequences we don't expect. When we post private things in public places, anyone and everyone has access to them. While sometimes it is good to be transparent about where we are in life, other times those angry feelings and emotions are fleeting. Far better to express them in person or over the telephone to our closest and most trusted friends or in a private journal for our eyes only.

I stepped away to have breakfast and think more about this post and where I wanted it to go. It is amazing to me how often my morning readings give wisdom appropriate for the day. From my morning readings from Grace Notes by Alexandra Stoddard come these words of wisdom:

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can - Michele de Montaigne

Concentrate on seeing all the beauty your soul can absorb but turn away from what is ugly and vile and degrading. The higher your sights , the better your spirits.

We all have neighbors. Greet them on the sidewalk or in the elevator, but try not to peer through their windows. Windows are to look out from, not into.

Ethics in Nature Photography

At the NANPA Summit another breakout sessions I attended was "The Ethics of Subject Welfare: Animals, People, and the Land."
The panelists were Daniel J. Cox, Susan McElhinney (who was absent due to illness), Michael "Nick" Nichols, and Michele Westmorland. The panel was moderated by Joshua Baker.

Several of these panels really made me think, and this was one of them. I am a firm believer that issues usually have both sides. And I think it is good to look at both sides, because if there is a "truth" it is probably somewhere in the middle. At some point, I have to figure out for myself what my position is or will be.

Obviously we don't want to harm the animals or the environment where we are photographing. When we have happened on to a marvelous photo opportunity, how long do we stay? Are we stressing the animal? Are there too many photographers making an animal nervous? In the heat of the magic moment, what are we going to do?

There are many reasons we need photographs of animals. We can use them to help people identify them. We may use them in a book or magazine article which perhaps might help other people appreciate the animal more. Animal photos are frequently used commercially to advertise products or businesses.

There are many reasons that some animals are captive. I've taken photos of captive raptors. One set of my captive animals came from the Desert Museum in Tucson. These animals are used to educate and inspire appreciation for the amazing abilities these birds have. I've also photographed animals in zoos. My personal take on zoo animals is that these animals are representatives for their species. We take our children to zoos so that they can learn to appreciate nature and animals that they would not be able to see in their native environments. And some zoos, like the San Diego zoo serve as safe places to breed endangered species so that eventually we can reintroduce them into the wild. The condor is one of the success stories of this type of captive breeding. I hope that the Atwater Prairie Chicken will be another success story. Several zoos are providing prairie chickens to the refuge in hopes of establishing a more viable population. Animal rescue centers care for animals that have been injured. Sometimes they can be released into the wild, but other times, the rescue center provides a safe and healthy environment for animals that cannot be released because of their injuries. These animals also serve as ambassadors for their species and are usually well treated. Some animals are kept captive so we can study them and learn more about their biology and their behavior.

There are also game farms. And here is where things get really controversial and heated. First you have to figure out how to define game farm. Near as I can tell, a game farm is a place where animals are kept for the sole purpose of photography and exhibition. They may be well treated and well cared for, but they live most of their time in enclosures that are much smaller than their normal territories. They are brought out and placed in "natural" and "scenic" settings for people to photograph them. They are usually immaculately groomed - so you get some pretty amazing and beautiful shots. You can also get much closer and so you can get great facial shots with eye detail. And in some cases, it may make sense to photograph this way. Sometimes it is for the photographer's convenience. Much easier to go to this facility and get your shot that your commercial agency is requesting. But sometimes there are advantages for the species as well. With endangered species, photographing a captive animal places less stress on the ones that are still trying to survive in the wild. Photographing a captive nest reduces the chance that you will interrupt a nesting cycle. Getting too close may either provide a predator an opportunity or could prevent the chicks from fledging.

One of the audience members proposed that there were no "free" animals any more. He included the African nature reserves. But in Africa, these animals are in their native habitat, they are free to go where they will in an area that allows them to roam the same amount of territory as they did before all the humans moved in. Plus most of these parks and and nature preserves have been set up to protect these animals and give them natural territories. My experiences in Africa let me get very close to animals living wild, in their natural environment. They were free to leave when we drove by or they could choose to continue their normal activities. Some species eyed us warily and then chose to run. Others checked us out and continued what they were doing. Huge amounts of land have been set up as natural parks much like what we have in the United States.

So the best definition of captive animals seems to be an animal that is not able to move about of its own will, an animal that is restrained in some way.

We are all free to take our photographs where we wish. We have to figure out where our ethical positions are for what we are choosing to photograph. But as professional photographers we must be honest in our submissions. Each market has guidelines. I know that the magazine Nature Photographer will not accept photos of captive animals. National Wildlife excludes images captive in game farms. And there are photographers like Thomas Mangelsen who stand up and confront photographic situations that they feel are unethical. The BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest prefers photographs taken in wild and free conditions. Nature's Best magazine's prestigious Windland Smith Rice International Awards also has a category for zoo animals. All others must be wild and in their natural habitat. As a photographer, I want to follow the submission guidelines for each market, gallery, or contest submission.

Michele Benoy-Westmoreland made an impression with her perspectives. She has done documentary work in Papua New Guinea with native tribes there. When I got home, I looked her up and found a fascinating story, "Headhunt Revisited" If ever I head in that direction, I would love to go on one of her tours because of her respect for the native cultures. I would like to learn more of what her point of view is as I hope to go back and spend more time in Africa one day. Among the things that she mentioned was trying to give them pride in their history and their culture. So many things are being lost as civilization moves in. She did a lot of preparation work before the filming - talking with the tribal leaders, making proper introductions, and finding ways to give back. She brought a small printer so she could give back pictures. She wanted to create not take. With her tours she finds ways to give back to these people in ways that will be useful to them and also encourage them to remember their culture. This ecotourism helps sustain the village and the demonstrations help keep traditions alive. Another great idea was to bring school supplies and books for the children rather than candy.

Globalization is making the world a much smaller place. We each have to figure out how we can make a difference.

This panel gave me much to think about.

NANPA has guidelines that have been developed over time to help photographers be aware of ethical issues. They have been posted on their website.


NANPA's Principles of Ethical Field Practices

NANPA's Environmental Statement

NANPA's Truth in Captioning

NANPA Breakout Session- Digital Alteration and the Line of Credibility

When I was signing up for my Breakout Sessions at the NANPA Summit, I knew that I needed to go to Ernie Mastroianni's "Digital Alteration and the Line of Credibility. Ernie is the Photo Editor at Birder's World Magazine. He is coming to this subject from a journalistic background.

I've come up through the ranks of the internet online photo competitions. Digital manipulation is common and encouraged. Photos that have not been cleaned up removing distracting elements don't win Photos of the Day as a rule. When trying to make an artistically beautiful image, it makes sense to use the tools at hand to make a visually pleasing end product. My policy has been to make sure I know what the rules at the various contests are and make sure my submission follows those rules. But, I've seen images win at the contests with the tighter rules on manipulation that I KNOW have been altered because I saw the original as it went through the critique process. Most of these changes don't really change anything about the "nature" of the situation.

I am now trying to submit my images to professional photo buyers. I am submitting for commercial, artistic, and journalistic usages of my photos. I had one portfolio reviewer last year tell me that I should be very careful with photo manipulation because if I do it anywhere then I would not be "trusted," or my credibility would be gone. Later in the Summit, I heard one of the presenters at a Breakout Session talk about how he was always honest with his end users. He manipulated some photos for the artistic appeal, but he also submitted non edited photos for scientific use. Another reviewer for a children's magazine has dealt with the issue by having different categories of images: photo altered (minor adjustments) and photo illustration (where components have been rearranged, removed, or images combined.) I left the 2007 Summit thinking that as long as I am honest in my submission as to what I've done to the image and that I am submitting appropriately to the entities that I am being ethical in what I'm doing with my photography.

So I sat down to listen to Ernie's presentation with great interest. I knew before hand that journalistic photos need to be pretty much straight out of the camera. In most cases removing sensor dust is usually OK. But with RAW capture there is a lot of manipulation that can be done without changing the image. And some manipulation is really just adjusting the image to be closer to what your eye actually saw rather than what the camera's technical abilities were to capture the image.

Ernie's policy for Birder's World is very simple and based upon journalistic principals:

Allowed adjustments;
Brightness
Contrast
Color Balance
Sharpness
Saturation adjustment

Alteration:
Cropping
Cloning dust marks and digital noise such as hot pixels
Red-eye (with some caveats)

Additional Alterations - based upon maintaining the reality of the scene
Composites taken at the same scene at the same time frame without altering elements
High Dynamic Range images which allow the information from shadows and highlights to be visible and accurate
Extreme depth of field - used a lot in macro to bring all of the image (such as a flower with petals) into sharp focus
Perspective control - simulating what a tilt shift lens can do

Additional information from Ernie:

Additional Alterations - based upon maintaining the reality of the scene"
These types of alterations can have credibility, but an explanation to the
reader is needed.

For instance, if I was publishing a picture that was a 360-degree panorama,
it would require an explanation, otherwise, how would the reader know how
wide it was. They might think they were seeing a 180 degree view, rather
than a 360 degree view.

Unacceptable alterations
Removing items
Cloning other than removing sensor dust spots
Combining or adding elements of one image to another
Changing color of individual components - such as greening up brown or dying vegetation
Stretching or compressing part of an image (distortion that is not a perspective control)

The best part of the presentation was WHY these are his standards. Photographic manipulation has been around as long as cameras. In doing some research for this blog, I found an image of Abraham Lincoln which was his head and John Calhoun's body. (See links at the end.) I have to wonder in the days of glass plate photography how this was done.

The Cottingley Fairies were photographs that deceived the eye, but apparently at the time led many people to believe that they were real photographs of fairies. To our more sophisticated eyes today they seem to be obviously artistic drawings that were cut out and put into the scene at the time of the photograph. And that kind of manipulation can be done today - adding toys to battlefield images of destroyed homes, adding trash to a scene to emphasize environmental issues, posing people for a news story, etc.

The credibility of photos is probably at an all time low, because people are more aware of how images can be altered. And several publications are trying to restore believability. Even if they have previously published altered images, the standards are tightening up.

The audience discussion was also enlightening. Arthur Morris, a well known and respected photographer, one of the best bird photographers around, pointed out a different set of issues. Imagine a bird photo of a bird on the top of a tree snag with a forked trunk. There are two trunks, both broken and different lengths and one really does not add anything to the beauty of the photo. In today's world, the collective wisdom is to clone out the distraction. In some cases you could have removed the offending branch before you took the shot, but then you are altering the environment. That alteration of the environment can upset the wildlife that live in that environment. There was a case mentioned where a hummingbird was frequenting one particular branch - seeming to prefer it to the other flowering branches nearby. For some reason a photographer thought it was not a particularly photogenic branch, so he broke it off and attached another prettier branch. The hummingbird was devastated. Not fully mentioned is the "gardening" we sometimes to when we are taking flower shots - whether in our own gardens or along the roadside. It might be as simple as removing a distracting rock or a taller stalk of grass. After all, a deer comes and munches on the grass. But . . . if you are in an area where there are endangered plant species, you could be doing irreparable harm removing plant life from your photographic composition to get that perfect photo.

Another sobering aspect of this issue is the fact that a few photographer's careers have been ruined after they made a simple change to a journalistic photo, even changes that really did not change the story in the photo. Their credibility as a journalistic photographer is gone forever.

Here is a practical example of these issues from a photo I took last week. I think you can click or double click to get a larger view.

Here is the original image - taken from the jpg - the only change is resizing for the blog:



Note that the water line is not level (from the time my eye "saw" this image to getting the camera and tripod setup without my hot shoe leveler . . . I had to be incredibly fast to get the shot while there was even the tiniest amount of sun still there) and note the few stalks of marsh grass on the right hand corner. And, yes, there IS sensor dust.

Here is my initial post processing. I've enhanced the colors (similarly to what you might get if you used Fuji's Vevlia film. I've leveled the water line, cropped such that the sun is off centered and the trees and their reflection occupy a larger portion of the frame.  I chose the bottom crop to avoid some of the marsh grass. And after some deliberation cloned out some single stalks of grass in the lower right hand corner. I chose to keep the grass on the left hand side because I felt like it added to the sense of place and kept the reality in the scene.

I submitted this to the Critique Corner at Digital Image Cafe. Now, I respect the critique process. I have learned SO much from having my work critiqued. I agree with and understand the comments made in the context of online contests (and even other artistic venues).




Here is the image with the lower left corner "cleaned up." It may be slightly more appealing to the eye. Those grass stalks do pull your eye a little bit away from the bright colored sky and the silhouetted tree trunks. They do interfere with the illusion of an oval that is created from the trees and their reflection. But here is where Ernie's comments are convicting and compelling: Nature is not perfect. "Real life with all of its imperfection is more interesting." Is it the essence of nature or wildlife or the desire of the photographer?



Ernie's comments from a thread at Naturescapes.net: "A photographer in this thread wondered if the elaborate outside studios, water drips, feeders and perching props used to attract wildlife to the perfect setting are simply another way of altering an image? My answer is no, there is a big difference. As long as that bird is free to come and go, you are capturing an image of a real bird, in real space and in real time. That bird wants to be there and if it sensed a threat, it would leave. The best setups anticipate the desires of the bird, and not the photographer. But if an image is altered after it was taken, it captures the desires of the photographer, and not the bird.The bottom line is always credibility. On occasion, some photographers have sent me altered images, but if they also send me the original unaltered file, their credibility as an editorial photographer remains intact."

Since the conference, these words keep coming into my head as I am capturing my images and as I do my post processing. For myself, I prefer the middle image, because it retains most of the essence of what I saw that night - with a minimal of post processing. If I decide to submit to the online contests I will probably submit the "cleaner" version. If I submit for calendars, I'll probably submit the middle one with a note in the metadata as to the changes I made.

For those that are still interested in this topic after this long blog, here are some other links that are illuminating. Complete with compelling images that illustrate the issues here:

Reuter's Photo Examples

Dan Heller's Digital Manipulation - Responsibility of Photojournalism

Dartmouth College paper "Photo Tampering Throughout History



The Perfect Fashion Model

Extreme Photoshop Makeover

Yellowstone's Grizzlies - Photography Ethics

This year's trip to Yellowstone provided amazing bear viewing - both grizzlies and black bears. There were several days when we saw at least 8 bears. I had not given it much thought until someone mentioned how many bears they had seen that day. I added up in my mind - mother grizzly and cub-Hayden Valley, mother grizzly and 2 cubs- Mount Washburn, black bear near Pebble Creek campground, mother black bear and 3 cubs on the mountain . . . yep - we had seen a bunch of bears as well.

As I've mentioned before, I found trying to capture the wonder and marvel of the bears to be challenging. For one thing - you never have any control over where the bear is. Sometimes the bear is that small speck on the distant slope. Sometimes the bear is right below you near the road. Sometimes you are the first one on the scene and have opportunites for a good angle. Sometimes you can make a good guess as to where the bear is headed and move ahead and have a good position as it wanders by. Sometimes all the other photographers have already found the bear and there is no place for you to set your camera gear up. Sometimes you luck into a good parking place and can wait and see what the bear is going to do. Sometimes you have good lighting (rare)-most of the time you are fighting direct sunlight or evening shade.

But occasionally you get lucky. You are close enough to the bear to get a full frame shot (from the relative protection of proximity to your car). Bears are in constant motion- so some shots are going to be motion blurred - that's a given. Bear is more interesting in grubbing than posing for you - you don't always get his or her most photogenic side. You DON'T want to make noise to get his attention. You wouldn't like it if he decided you were a better meal.

But out of all my bear shots - it is the bear's eyes that are one of my biggest frustrations. Out of hundreds of shots, in only one do you get a very good look at the eyes. (And that one the rest of the bear was motion blurred.) And in animal photography, getting the eye clear, crisp, and with a catchlight makes the difference between a ho hum shot and a winning excellent shot. With some animal shots, I can take what the camera captured and work some photoshop magic with levels, dodging and burning, and sharpening to make the eye look "natural" and give that wonderful eye contact with the animal. I don't have an ethical problem with that, because I'm taking what is really the eye and just bringing out the details. With my bear photos that was not possible. Between camera angle issues, the bear's thick eyelashes, and the lighting - there was no detail there to do anything with. During the trip, there was not time to work many of the photos. So I am just now doing some of the post processing. I've got someone potentially interested in some of the grizzly shots for a print to hang on a wall. So I worked on them last night. I started playing with the eyes.

I used a New Layer>Overlay> Overlay neutral color 50%. I've learned that I can add just a dab of color to the dodge and burn process - so I chose a color for the brush that was in the brown tones - giving some color to the eyes. Then I used black for the brush and added a pupil. Then I went to the original layer and added a spot of white for the catchlight that brings life to the eye. Sometimes I slightly darkened the edges of the eye to add definition. On the close ups of the mother grizzly, I now have eye contact.


Even though the eye is a small part of the overall photo - this small change is enough to make it ineligible for some of the major wildlife competitions and for some nature magazines. Where ever I submit any of these shots, I will make sure the editor knows the changes I have made.







BEFORE:



























AFTER:





















FINISHED PHOTO:







And by the way, on the grizzly at the top of this post, I did additional "repair work." This grizzly was injured over a year ago. While he could use both paws to dig for grubs, he walked using one paw and one elbow - painfully and arthritically. He also had a big scar on his face. For a print to hang on someone's wall, I did "plastic surgery" or "skin grafts" on his cheek. The photo is more likely to find a place on a decorative wall without the ugly scar. However, once again, if I market this image, I'll be honest to the editors as to what I've done. They can decide whether a scarred bear or an artistic rendition of a bear best suits their needs.

I've posted what I think are my best grizzly shots at my website.