Many readers of Interpretation By Design are members of the National Association for Interpretation (NAI), while others are friends or family who think that Shea and I are involved with language translation or some kind of dance troupe. (Note: For those friends or family who have no idea what heritage interpretation is, trust me, that last joke was hilarious.) Those of you who are members of NAI should be receiving, if you haven’t already, the March/April issue of Legacy magazine, through which I have realized a career-long goal of featuring a giant foam #1 finger prominently in a piece of graphic design.
Only there’s a catch.
In June of last year, I wrote a post called Presidential Photoshop Ethics criticizing The Washingtonian magazine for digitally altering a photo of Barack Obama, changing the color of his bathing suit from black to red for aesthetic purposes. In the post, I write:
In ethical terms, I have always felt that Photoshop should be used to adjust or correct photos (adjusting lighting, removing dust, etc.), to create original works of art that do not purport to be photographs, or to make obvious changes (like dropping out a background) that are not intended to deceive.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am compelled to reveal that I used Photoshop to remove the logo of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the text “Go Blue” from the cover photo on Legacy. The original photo by Ben Shafer is pictured here.
NAI has only eight full-time employees, so we are frequently asked to wear many different hats. My responsibilities include graphic design, editorial content of some of our publications, and lifting heavy things. I serve as both the editor and art director for Legacy, which affords me more liberties with the magazine than most editors or art directors have. (“That article doesn’t fit in the space allotted? Let’s see how it looks after we lop out all of the adverbs.”) So when I made the change to the photo on the cover of this issue, the tiny winged editor on one shoulder was debating the pitch fork-wielding graphic designer on the other:
Editor: “It’s dishonest to change the photo!”
Graphic Designer: “Change the picture. It’ll make the communication more clear. Plus, we hate the Dodgers.”
Editor: “You’re mean.”
Graphic Designer: “You’re a sissy.”
Editor: “Shut up!”
Graphic Designer: “You shut up!”
Editor: “Comic Sans is an appropriate choice in some situations!”
Graphic Designer: “I’ll kill you in your sleep!”
Me: “Quiet, both of you!”
I get a lot of funny looks around the office.
Ultimately, I made the change, not for aesthetic purposes but for the clarity of the communication. The issue is about interpreting sports, and I felt that the logo and rallying cry of a specific team muddied the communication. To me, a giant foam finger in a stadium just says, “Sports.” A giant foam finger with the Dodgers logo and the text “Go Blue” says, “Hateful, late-arriving, early-leaving, tofu-eating non-fans and their stupid team.” I realize that I may be bringing my own bias to this project, but that’s the point. Even if the photo featured the logo of a team I like (say, for instance, the Phillies), I’d have removed it. Hardly anyone has a negative association with a generic foam finger, but the logo of a specific team invites emotional responses that have nothing to do with the intended communication.
Even after I convinced myself that it was okay to alter the photo, that little editor was still hovering over my shoulder, making me feel guilty, so I came clean by running the original photo and a disclaimer inside the magazine. I explained the change that I had made and referred to the cover image as a “photo illustration” rather than a photo.
I’ll be curious to see what the response is. Does running the original photo inside the magazine mitigate the dishonesty of altering it? Have I invited criticism by fessing up and running the disclaimer in the first place? How does photographer Ben Shafer feel about seeing his photo altered? Why was Jonathan Broxton so scared of Matt Stairs in Game 4 of the NLCS? So many questions…
Paul, you have man an egregious error. More people have “a negative association with a generic foam fingers” than you think. It is not nice to point. I’m just glad it wasn’t red. I have a specific “negative association with” red foam fingers and Manny wigs.
Shea, at least the foam finger is pointing the index? My only negative association with foam fingers is that as a southpaw I was always mad that foam fingers only featured the right hand, and that I felt silly with it on my left.
I never thought the day would come where the cover of a magazine, let alone Legacy, would have a big foam finger. What’s next … 70 and 80 year men in Baseball Uniforms? Cheese heads? Men with Hog Noses and Dresses? Curling pants?
To Paul … I am glad you can cross an item off your career-long goal list with the foam finger placement
To the Editor …. you are not a sissy, well not most of the time
To the Graphic Designer … an occasional Comic Sans will not end the world … I know I probably just went down 5 notches on “the list”
To both the Editor and Graphic Designer … thank you for removing the “Go Blue” & “Dodgers”
To Shea … so sorry Paul could not have placed a red finger for you. You probably would have exploded from the double whammy of Red Sox Red and Phillies Red
To baseball fans everywhere … “Play Ball”
Let’s root ♪♫ root ♪♫ root ♪♫ for the home team …
For me, that means the Padres and/or Phillies ….
Paul, you get the Phillies and/or Rockies ….
Shea, you have the Arkansas Travelers or the NW Arkansas Naturals and we will throw in the Memphis Redbirds too.
I have a friend who was doing a photoshoot for the Smithsonian (I think) magazine. He was taking pictures of what appeared to be a scientist, in a lab, hard at work, with her head down over a microscope.
She was not, in fact a scientist. She was a model. She wasn’t working, she was posing. She wasn’t in a lab, she was in a studio. She wasn’t illuminated by overhead fluorescents, but by professional photography lighting. Her hair had been styled, she was wearing makeup. She wasn’t looking at anything through the microscope.
In one of the photos he took, which the magazine liked, he’d included a bit of the soda can she was drinking from. He offered to ‘shop the can out, but they said that would violate their photo guidelines.
I think there are two ways to look at photography and subsequent development and printing.
1. All photographs must be TRVTH. They must hew in all respects to the real world, they must not deviate at all, for any purpose, or you as the photographer|editor|publisher|whatever have lied to your audience.
2. All photographs are lies. Every one. They might remain truthful in some respect or another, but they are all imperfect translations of the real world. Whether that imperfection is inadvertent, or intentional, they are all alterations.
I see this occasionally in photographer websites and forums. Someone will post a shot they took, and proudly announce that they didn’t Photoshop it at all. Why is that a good thing? You think Ansel Adams didn’t use every tool available to him in the darkroom to produce the result he was aiming for? You think he just printed stuff straight from the camera? “I could have improved the hell out of this shot with some dodging here, and here, and here, but oh well.”
From it’s beginning photography has been a manipulative art. From the selection of what will be in the frame, when to release the shutter, f-stop, film speed, color vs bw, to all the choses available in the darkroom photographers express a point-of-view. With the advent of digital, this art form is now accessible to a much larger percentage of the population and much easier to accomplish. For me the basic question is, as with any form of interpretation, what is the purpose of the endeavor. Your decision to create a photo collage (for how different is it from erasing the offending lines to pasting in a blank hand) to illustrate the content of this issue of Legacy makes sense after all you purpose was not to document a Dodgers artifact.
“The essence of good and evil lies in an attitude of the will.” -Epicurcus
Pffft. Everyone knows if it’s not hockey, it’s not important. So have your little baseball fun.
I remember a movement some years ago to develop a symbol for photos that would function like quotation marks for text in journalism. That is, this symbol would indicate that the photo had not been altered. It never got off the ground, but it does raise an interesting point: writers ‘manipulate’ events all the time by the way they (we) choose to emphasize certain facts over others. There is always a certain amount of bias involved. The written word of newspapers has dealt with this by clearly labelling direct quotations, editorials and advertisements. (You’re on your own for figuring out more subtle forms of bias.)
The advent of Photoshop means that it is much easier for photographers to do what writers have always done. As long as altered images are labelled as photo illustrations, I think they’re fair game. And I’d far rather have logos removed than blurred out. That drives me crazy.
Paul, just shut your yap. Like the spitball, it’s only cheating if you get caught. Otherwise, it’s just something that everybody does and accepts (so long as it’s not changing the outcome of the World Series). To me, this is such a minor change that it’s hardly worth a mention, and if you’d just kept quiet nobody would’ve known or, I’m guessing, cared.
Ouch. wow.
Anyway, I noticed the lack of writing on the foam finger. But more surprised you chose blue instead of red. You’re the designer, I say you have the power. After all, you could have justified it as a random, popular sports color choice, or that it picked up the red accents in the stadium.
Oh my goodness! I am now even more honored to be part of this issue. Fun stuff going on. Especially since my team is the Dodgers this year (instead of the Cubs). Having grown up in L.A. in a family where everyone’s blood is blue (or purple and gold depending on the season) I was frowned upon as a Bronx Bombers fan, but alas, now that Torre and my all time favorite, Donnie Baseball have changed coasts, my blood is slowly fading from navy to royal, if they could just get rid of Mr. Dreadlocks, the transition would be completed…
As for the photo, I recognized it instantly, I used to sit in those blue seats in the background. Love it.