Some Thoughts on Chimping

Chimping is the derogatory term used by some professional photojournalists to describe the act of looking at your digital photographs on the back of your camera while you are still in the situation you are photographing. The gist it is that you are so impressed with the photographs that you are making that you have to stop and oooh and ahhh over them, missing the action that is still unfolding around you. And it is true that it is hard to make good pictures while looking at the back of your camera, so for that time you are effectively removed from the act of composing and exposing. But reviewing work as it is being made isn't entirely a bad thing and it is worth looking back at how photojournalism evolved technically to see why the word 'chimping' might have such derogatory connotations and the new opportunities that this derogatory attitude is overlooking.

To understand it better we need to understand the separate and reciprocal relationship between picture making and picture editing. Most workaday photojournalism has been done in search of the one hero image that stands out from the rest on the contact sheet or on the screen and is selected to run alone in a newspaper or on the wire. If you are looking to make that image, you shoot a lot, and constantly, and then when the action is over, you sit down to go through the images, culling out the strongest frames and eventually arriving at the best images. Best meaning most marketable or most likely to be published.

In the analog world, editing and photographing are two related but separate practices. Photographing takes place out in the action where events are taking place in real time. Images are recorded on film, but only exist as potential pictures in the camera, still waiting to be processed and realized as actual visual realities. In the field they are simply stored away in darkness and it is up to the photographer to remember and record sequences and images, building on what she or he thinks exists in the exposed but undeveloped film.

Once the images are processed, they can be reviewed together in their entirety and the editing process begins. With all the images present, the most useful images are selected and sequenced. But, since the process has taken the editing away from the action in both time and place, there is much less opportunity to fill in holes.

Frequently images are remembered as stronger than they are, or images that were not impressive immediately upon the making come out in the editing process as being major events in the body of work. In either case, there is little that can be done to build on or correct these unexpected turns in the photographs.

In the analog world the editing is a strong learning process, one that photographers should have to go through to refine their working method. Separating photo making and photo editing has great benefits for developing a strong eye and a consistent vision. It gives time for the images to sink in, for the photographer to learn from them, to digest the lessons and think about what to do next. Within the immediacy of the digital process, much of this reflection can be easily lost. That immediacy does however offer some new advantages going forward.

Digital cameras have collapsed the distance between making and editing to the point that they can occur in tandem. This is of real value for the photographer who has a strong sense of both editing and field work. If you are simply looking to make the hero image, then this editing process is perhaps less relevant. But digital publishing has opened up the distribution possibilities for larger bodies of work, and photo essays of 1 image or of 10 images or even 100 images have roughly the same media barriers to dissemination. In other words, the market is ready and able to publish a lot more images for a massively reduced cost in distribution. The larger essay has much more value today because it shows so much more than the single image. Photographers need to be thinking in these terms.

Every body of work when it is done has weak points, areas where the photographer wishes she or he had added something, included more of a particular aspect or explored more deeply a part of the work. By reviewing work as it is being made, those weak points can be potentially identified and filled in or strengthened as the work is being developed--so long as the photographer has a clear idea of how to build a larger scale essay and is able to keep the distinction clear between editing and photographing, even while doing both at the same time.

That skill has a significant learning curve to it, one that I think is best explored by carefully practicing the image making and the editing at separate times, learning from each. But the realities are that we need also to make the best use of our technology as it works for us. Editing as part of the process is the best evolution of digital technology and it offers the most possibility for the photographer who has both editing and picture making skills. If done well in the field, the final work is stronger and more complete, building on itself rather than exclusively on the memory of the photographer in the moment. Finding a working balance between making and editing in camera is both the challenge and the way of the future.

HEAL Africa Safe Motherhood Program

This holiday season I produced this short piece for HEAL Africa's Safe Motherhood program. It is an incredible initiative to support and protect pregnant women in Eastern Congo, one of the most vulnerable populations in one of the most difficult places in Africa.

HEAL Africa Safe Motherhood Program from HEAL Africa on Vimeo.

Read more on the HEAL Africa website here.

Truth and Manipulation in Photojournalism

There currently is a lot of attention directed at preserving a notion of photography as 'truth' that is unmanipulated. The basic argument behind all of this is that retouching is untruthful and therefore must be regulated. If we can regulate it, then we can trust photography and photojournalism again. And that is basically where the argument stops, for reasons I will explain.

The latest addition to the long line of photo manipulation guidelines is World Press Photo's recent "rule" in their 2010 call for entries. It reads:

"The content of an image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed. The jury is the ultimate arbiter of these standards and may at its discretion request the original, unretouched file as recorded by the camera or an untoned scan of the negative or slide."
(via PDN and Jim Johnson)

The problem of course is that the rule is as arbitrary as the notion of truth in photography itself. You can, and many will, drive a truck through the holes in that system. The "rule" does not address the evolving nature of currently accepted standards or deal with their arbitrary nature and roots in the marketplace. What was practiced routinely by Life Magazine would never fly today, and what we are capable of doing in-camera today was beyond imagination in 1950's.

It is however entirely possible to create a straight forward, enforceable and universally consistent set of allowable digital post-processing practices for photojournalism. Here is what that could look like:

Images must be shot in camera raw format, and a version of the camera raw file must always be preserved as a baseline. Not a single pixel can be added, moved or removed from within the frame. Post-processing is limited to adjusting levels for white point/black point as well as overall tone distribution. Curves use is limited to minor contrast and tonal corrections. Overall color adjustments are to correct casts only. Local masking and color corrections are limited to balancing the image and opening shadows or correcting thin highlights.

The reason that a flat, limiting standard like this would add value to photojournalism exists in its implied function as evidence gathering. This would set up an important understanding with the audience as to how these photographs perform in an evidentiary capacity and what the rules are for how they are processed.

A straight forward set of rules such as the one I have laid out above does not in any way, though, address the main problem that underlies the whole kerfuffle, which is the fact that photographs can easily and skillfully be manipulated to serve a wide variety of purposes, even within such tight constrictions as I have outlined above. There are no rules that can control the medium's capacity to do just that, and once you start down the slope of trying to control it, each restriction points to successive manipulations that are possible and practicable.

Let me explain in real world working terms.

Let's say that I am sent to photograph a woman who is in the middle of a high profile legal battle. When I walk into her house, I can see that her living room is neat, with a mess of paperwork spread out on the table. She is average height, 5'7" (I am 6'2"). I take pictures using available light and I never ask to her move or pose in any way. I photograph her sitting at the table looking at me over a pile of paperwork. She looks a little harried and disheveled in context with the mess on the table. I also photograph her standing by her fireplace. I shoot in a vertical format crouching down slightly so that the camera is looking at her from mid torso height. She looks strong and powerful in the frame, looking down at the viewer. Next I photograph her from my full height looking down at her, she is looking up. Her head is slightly increased in size in relation to her body by the angle. She looks brainy, but smaller. Then I photograph her looking out her window in soft natural light. She appears winsome and romantic.

The shoot is done. I leave. The pictures are processed and delivered, and the editors have a wide range of images to chose from, all which make different arguments about who this person is in relation to her story. Each is a manipulation of sorts, and the image that most suits the position of the story will be selected to run.

Within the body of images that I made, one publication who is against her legal position might pick an image where she looks harried, while another in support of her might pick an image where she looks powerful. Both are shot within the accepted constraints of photojournalism, and both are representations of her that make very different arguments.