Toning and ethics

This is from the blog On the Other Side, and pertains to a discussion we had about toning and the ethics of the vignette. The following is just a tiny bit of the rich discussion that appears on the blog. Some good weekend food for thought:

"There is a very fine line with toning pictures. Software programs that most photographers use on a daily basis allow them to do some pretty crazy things. I went to journalism school right at the start of the digital age and essentially the end of using film on a daily basis. We mostly shot film, used a minilab to develop the film, and then scanned them into the computer and used a program like photoshop to slightly adjust the pictures.

There is also a gray area about what is ethical and what isn't. There are the biggies that are fundamental--like cloning someone/something in or out of your frame. But to me the big part of ethics has to do with intention and misleading. Statements like "If I can do it in a darkroom, it's okay" or "This is what the scene looked like to me" aren't good enough reasons. I've seen what used to be done in a darkroom ---and you can do some pretty drastic things.

This is why for me it comes down to the intent of the photographer, and whether or not it misleads the reader. "

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