Doctoring Photos in London

Well. Those Brits do have some different standards. I just can’t see that happening here. At least not any newsroom I’ve worked in. You might find yourself all over Romenesko in the morning. I seem to remember a pretty big stink over the Post-Dispatch’s disappearing Coke can and National Geographic’s magical moving pyramids. It’s not a long walk from there to Brian Walski. —Doctoring Photos in London (News Designer)

Uh… there really wasn’t any good blurb to quote from this article, but it includes images of a severed limb that was edited out of European news photos, but which American news sources ran without change.

It’s certainly not a pretty picture. I do think that cropping a picture is justifiable. The Guardian left the limb there, but changed its color to gray — making it less noticeable. Since photo editors often used to “dodge” or “burn in” areas to affect their brightness, I think that’s probably following the letter of the law, though completely changing blood-red flesh to gray is probably violating the spirit. Still, that’s probably more defensible than removing it entirely and replacing it with a false background.

The Guardian apparently has this story, but is requiring registration now. Feh, I simply can’t be bothered.