We see all too often, ethical breaches, the latest from Getty, where an image they represent editorially, of a football player was manipulated. (PDNOnline reports on this here.)
Values are not what you say, they are what you do, and how you act, and comport yourself. Here’s a great link about “the power of personal values.”
(Continued after the Jump)
Getty can suggest all they want that they’re editorial department is in fact, editorial, but try a search for “NBA brawl” and you get only 16 images, of the press conference afterwards, and a few nice player images once they’ve returned after their suspensions. No images of the actual fight. A search on Google yields thousands of results. No doubt, many of them duplicates, but they’re there. Where’s the editorial independence? Oh, it’s absent when you’re selling images and the league doesn’t want you to make them look bad.
Character, it’s said, is who you are when no one’s looking. So too are your values, which form your character, as do ethics.
P.F. Bentley, for example, has a lot of character. As I wrote here – At least the Hypocrite Knows Right from Wrong, P.F. did the right thing, and no one would have even thought about it if he’d just given in.
If your success is at the expense of your good values or ethics, then, what success is there, really?
As I’ve said before, the best approach to what we do is – “do well by doing good.” Amen.
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Originally published on Photo Business News & Forum on November 22, 2007. Comments are closed; this post is part of the archive.
Just to give some background. NFL head shots are shot in late winter/spring/early summer. The players come in over a few days to get it done. All of the shots from all of the teams are to all be shot the exact same way, i.e. lighting, backdrop and positioning of players/personnel . Once that is done, the teams pick the photos, name them and ship them to Getty for color correction.
I would also like to add that there are some players that will just NOT have their head shot done each year. Some players go years between getting a new image shot.
I speak only for myself, but there is a HUGE difference between a graphic artist changing a head shot and someone changing a news worthy image like action from a game or feature story.