And I would've gotten away with it too if it weren't for you pesky duplicate people

Pretty good edit job, at least.

Yeah, I'd love to see his work with kittens.

haha, yeah, you can see three people twice.

dummy.

only acceptable if one of the ppl you photoshop in = evil bert

yeah a certain amount of overzealous strictness is called for, with mark's exception of course

ok so what's the ethical distinction between posed shots (classic example: iwo jima — the photographer got there later and made them redo it) and photoshopping?

there's a famous picture of the storming of the winter palace much reproduced in (coffee-table type) history books which was recently discovered to be a still from a film news piece abt a bolshevik anniversary restaging of same (some sort of a theatrical celebration involving many of the same soldiers)* a few years later (ie the bolsheviks weren't the ones being sneaky here, necessarily)

*remember to delete asterisk.

the difference is the alibi of "I was just trying to get a good shot" is more sellable than with a photoshopped shot where the reflexive response is 'what's the agenda being pushed here?' - the first instance I can remember where this became an issue was when Time retouched the OJ mug shot for their cover (they shadowized it all Matt Mahurin); the excuse they used was that the manipulation after the fact was so obvious it negated the need to note it or any ethical quandry. No one was worried about the photographer's posing of the subject/shot ie. 'okay, eyes forward'. it's the same brouhaha that surrounded the Michelle Pfeiffer Esquire cover ten years back (it's 'hey remember the nineties' inside my head right now), which had been touched up to some controversy, the notion that it presented a 'false beauty', impossible standard for women to live up to, something, I forget, but my point is noone was worried about the fact that the photographer had obviously had her pose. Now straight journalism photos are different, and held to a higher standard obv., but the fact that the after-the-fact manipulation was such an issue in term's of 'losing/keeping the public's trust' while the obvious at-the-shooting manipulation wasn't an issue at all plays into the debate when it comes to straight photojournalism also.

also, considering the cynicism from the right and the left when it comes to media coverage of the war, the 'don't trust anyone' factor makes posed shots taken for granted but digitally manipulated shots an 'aha! DO YOU SEE?'

plus all those Soviet Marty McFly polaroids

There seems to be no ideological agenda to the manipulation this time, or I'm not seeing it if there is.

No, I don't think anyone's saying there is, it's just the 'slippery slope' argument.

that's why it took so many soldiers to raise the flag at iwo jima.