Reuters, the world's largest international multimedia news provider, recently announced (following in the footsteps of Associated Press) they will not accept RAW or CR2 files from freelance photographers anymore. They will accept original Jpeg files with minimal corrections, like cropping and level corrections.
Why? Reuter's explanation, "While we aim for photography of the highest aesthetic quality, our goal is not to artistically interpret the news.” Translation - Photos may be 'manipulated' to tell a different story. Fact is, any digital photo may be 'manipulated' by post processing software to varying degrees to tell all kinds of stories.
And then there is the manipulation of the scene before the photo is taken. Remember the BBC 2009 Wildlife Photographer of the Year was stripped of his title because of 'irregularities'? The moral of the story is, if the photo looks 'too perfect', Viewer Beware and start asking questions.
The video below from Vietnam shows how easy it is to 'fool' the viewer into believing a scene that is completely manufactured and unreal. You can see my works on MichaelDanielHo.com
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