Today’s post is a long read\u00a0so it won’t be of interest to everyone and I accept that fact. But this subject has been\u00a0nagging at me for a long time so I had to finally\u00a0get it off my\u00a0chest.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/yellow-rumped-warbler-8357-cloned-twig-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-rumped-warbler-8357-cloned-twig-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nI photographed this Yellow-rumped Warbler just over a month ago near the Jordan River. I quite like the photo because of the droopy-wing pose which\u00a0allows us to see\u00a0both of the predominant yellow areas of the species including that yellow rump responsible for their “Butter-butt” nickname. I have a clean background (somewhat unusual for this species), an interesting curved perch and there’s good light on the bird.<\/p>\n
But there’s a problem. This isn’t the photograph I took.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/yellow-rumped-warbler-8357-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-rumped-warbler-8357-ron-dudley\\"")
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1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 640, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nThis is what I saw through my viewfinder. In the first version of the image I cloned out the twig at upper left to make a point.<\/p>\n
To be honest I’m fine with that twig. It mimics the curve of the perch and the arch of the warbler’s back, it isn’t too close to the bird for my tastes, it’s sharp\u00a0and besides, it’s natural and it was there. But many photographers would have cloned it out because they think it distracts by pulling the viewer’s attention away from the bird (partly due to its relative brightness).<\/p>\n
But even if I wasn’t fine with the twig I wouldn’t clone it out and present the “fake” image as real because IMO that’s dishonest to the viewer and it isn’t what I photographed. My craft isn’t digital “art”,\u00a0it’s nature photography.\u00a0To\u00a0my eye\u00a0the first version of the image reeks of a setup or a clone job anyway, especially considering the species which generally prefers relatively thick cover for its habitat. I was just lucky to get this bird as clean as I did, even with the twig in the image.<\/p>\n
In the past fake\u00a0nature photography\u00a0was\u00a0pervasive in our mass media including (but not limited to) magazines, books and television “documentaries” and the photographers and producers involved\u00a0were incredibly innovative and creative in their methods and\u00a0slick at hiding what they’d done.\u00a0Photographers cloned\u00a0unwanted elements out of their images or cloned wanted elements into them and\u00a0documentary producers would\u00a0rent animals from game farms and then force them to go through their\u00a0paces and film them doing it. Example: throwing a rented cougar off a cliff into a river so it\u00a0could be filmed as it\u00a0went over a waterfall – we can thank Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom<\/em> for that one but the list is endless and similar practices continue to this day, though thankfully to a lesser degree at least in some quarters.<\/p>\nWere you a fan of any of the following in their day?<\/p>\n
\n- Oscar-winning White Wilderness<\/em> – Faked, using a turntable to fling “suicidal” lemmings\u00a0off a cliff and a polar bear cub thrown over the side of a mountain to film it as it bounced down the steep slope<\/li>\n
- Mutal of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom<\/em> – Faked, terrified tame animals were lassoed and then wrestled in order to “rescue” them<\/li>\n
- Wild America with Marty Stouffer<\/em> – Faked, regularly staged fatal confrontations between predators and prey<\/li>\n
- The spectacular Winged Migration<\/em> – Faked, with tame birds, raised from eggs and imprinted on their handlers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Even Sir David Atttenborough (whom I admire) has admitted that he faked a scene about a polar bear giving birth in the wild that was really shot in a zoo<\/p>\n
The list is truly endless and even though many of the examples I’ve listed\u00a0above are older dishonest and wildlife-stressing practices continue today, largely because of the pervasiveness of game farms that rent out animals to anyone willing to pay their\u00a0fees\u00a0and because of the ease of faking film and photographs in this digital age.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, many of the more respected nature\u00a0magazines like Audubon, Natural History, Smithsonian, National Wildlife<\/em> and\u00a0some nature photo contests\u00a0are beginning to make efforts to restrict or prevent such abuses\u00a0in their magazines (or at least disclose them in their credits). And the more respected nature photo contests are finally beginning to enforce ethics rules for their competitions but doing so is extremely difficult because photography fakery is often hard to detect and because so many nature photographers are willing to cheat (prize money can be lucrative and the fame of winning alluring).<\/p>\nBut highly respected nature magazines and photo contests are dwarfed by other markets like fishing and hunting magazines and the vast poster and calendar industries which\u00a0have no standards at all\u00a0for honesty,\u00a0ethics and humane treatment of animals\u00a0in\u00a0nature photography. For\u00a0example, Ted Williams in\u00a0Audubon Magazine writes:<\/p>\n
\n- ”\u00a0The vast hook-and-bullet press is shameless. Battery acid is splashed on captive fish to make them leap frantically. I talked to one genuine wildlife photographer who has quit submitting deer photos to hook-and-bullet publications because he can\u2019t compete with all the photographers who rent or own penned deer bred for freakishly large antlers. One such mutation, appearing on the covers of countless hunting rags, had four owners, the last of which bought him for $150,000. For years the ancient beast was kept on life support with medications and surgeries.”\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Some may think it’s a stretch for me to equate sickening abuses like some of those above with cloning elements into or out of a nature photograph (especially when it isn’t disclosed) but it’s a slippery slope and in my opinion it’s all dishonest at a minimum and some of it is much worse than that.<\/p>\n
I believe that full\u00a0disclosure of some of these\u00a0methods can mitigate to some degree\u00a0but never absolves.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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Notes:<\/p>\n
\n- If you have the interest and are willing to\u00a0invest the time required you might want to read this excellent article in Audubon Magazine by Ted Williams<\/a> which details\u00a0the history and describes the more\u00a0current state of fakery in nature photography and media. Believe me, it’s a real eye-opener.<\/em><\/li>\n
- Evan Hirsche, former president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, described a semifinalist who had to be disqualified from their photo contest for cheating (cloning elements into and out of his image) as “ethically challenged” in\u00a0William’s article. I know from experience how frustrated Hirsche has been in the past by cheating in their well-respected contest because I was personally involved in an\u00a0incident where the grand prize\u00a0winner of their contest had cheated. In several\u00a0lengthy phone\u00a0conversations with Hirsche and the attorney\u00a0for NWRA it became obvious to me how difficult it can be to enforce ethics rules and honesty when photographers are willing to cheat and lie.<\/em><\/li>\n
- If I were king I’d make game farms illegal in most instances and expect photo contests to require that photos be submitted in RAW format.<\/em><\/li>\n
- Except for a single instance many years ago when I was new to photography and entered some photos at the state fair I’ve never submitted photos to a photo contest and likely never will. Because of the pervasive cheating in that arena photo contests leave a rancid taste in my mouth that I can’t overcome. Probably cutting off my nose to spite my face but that’s the way it is…<\/em><\/li>\n
- There’s a fine line between the photographer who digitally alters his\/her nature images for their own personal satisfaction or for reasons related to “digital art” or artistic expression\u00a0and those who deliberately try to\u00a0mislead or cheat in photos meant for publication or public consumption (including on the internet). It’s a line I’m unwilling to cross or even approach but others have different views\u00a0and I accept that fact. It just\u00a0isn’t for me…\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I mentioned yesterday I’ve been reexamining some of my expectations of my own photography but some things will never change and this is one of them.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,334,16,1278],"tags":[865,1280,1813,3645,3646,1279],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/yellow-rumped-warbler-8357-cloned-twig-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-dQX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}