Video still by Jason N Parkinson; Photoshop by A N Incompetent?
I can’t imagine the reason for the latest bit of crude manipulation of images to come to my attention, found rather surprisingly in the latest Freelance, the newsletter of the London Freelance Branch of the National Union of Journalists.
There I am, standing at the left of the picture – from a video still by Jason N Parkinson, wearing a jacket and with two Nikons around my neck, but with my head apparently swathed in bandages. I really didn’t think I was so ugly I had to be photoshopped out.
I was there and taking pictures and was making no secret about it – writing about it here on my blog and even getting quoted in ‘Amateur Photography’ so there was certainly no need for anonymity. It seems purely a gratuitous example of the very kind of manipulation that we regard as unethical. Given its crudity it might of course even have been simply the result of a careless mouse gesture.
You can read more about the protest in Photographers City Hall Flashmob on My London Diary.
A week ago I went to the London launch of the booklet* about the successful ‘I’m a Photographer, Not A Terrorist’ campaign that the World Press Freedom Day flashmob at City Hall was a part of.
And here, completely unretouched, are a couple of pictures I took at the launch event. And no, I wasn’t wearing bandages around my head that night either.
and outside on the pavement after the speeches:
Thanks to whoever took this in the gloom on my Fuji X100
Though shortly after the unadorned picture of me was taken I could have done with some bandages as I turned around suddenly and went flying as my shin contacted bloodily with the sharpened concrete edge of a street flower container. Probably I should sue.
*copies free if you send an A5 SAE with 2 stamps on it to :
Photographer Not a Terrorist
308-312 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8DP