World Press Photo disqualifies photographer

[johnastovall]

World Press Photo has disqualified a Ukraine-based photographer - Stepan Rudik - for altering his images "beyond the boundary of what is acceptable practice, BJP has learnt


Full details

[dmcantrell]

Interesting read, but now I want to see the photo and I can't find it anywhere.

[Tom]

World Press Photo Disqualifies Winner

Here is the photo, the raw image, and the very severely edited image.

[Cajungaltx]

lol - they dq'd him because he cloned out a foot in the background...

interesting....

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Also pretty heavy texturing on the image which pretty much removes the top portion of the person whose foot was removed from the photo.

Really he shot it on a digital and submitted a pic that he tried to infer that it was shot on B+W film that was heavily pushed to get the "mood" that he was going for. To me that is like going to a war zone now and trying to recreate a WWII gritty look of film.

[Dobick]

it also looks as if he cloned out the jeans of the person that the foot belonged to... Although that is hard to tell due to the amount of grain that was added in post as well as the ungodly amount of vignetting added.

Seems to me that the editing of the photos is what gives them their visual impact (based on the two examples that I have seen) Otherwise, I can't see where this series would have any appeal at all.

From Society of Professional Journalist Code of Ethics

— Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.

The content of these photos seems distorted based on the edits (not the least of which is removing an element from the photo)

What's funny, is that a slight change of position and focal length would have given him the shot that he was looking for in the camera without having to resort to editing tricks.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Or shooting with Tri-X and pushing the c rap out of it, along with paying attention to the scene as mentioned above.

[photonewb]

sheesh...seems like he didn't do anything at all when you compare it to the three wolves jumping the fence in a full moon photo...lol

[janikphoto]

He could get away with the heavy burning and dodging, but cloning out an element is simply not allowed in newspaper work.

[ChuckW]

The editing makes that shot. Without the editing it is a pretty run-of-the-mill snapshot. But, if the contest was limited to strictly journalistic entries, I wouldn't argue with the disqualification.

[Crashoran]

That PP job is horrid..

[Angelo]

That foot had no importance to the story.

No question, the photographer saw an image within an image and created what would sell.
It's unfortunate for him because I think he would have won even with the foot there.

However, rules are rules and the photographer should have known the rules and abided them.