Is the Hipstamatic photojournalism's breaking point?

Image by Marco Gomes via Flickr

First let me get this out of the way: I think New York Times photographer Damon Winter is one of the best photojournalists out there. I speak with a bit of knowledge; I am the photo editor of a national newspaper. The iPhone Histamatic app lets you shoot photos with the phone and after which the app processes them in a customized manner, that gives you an end product that mimics various old films and cameras. So far,so good. It's fun and interesting. But is it photojournalism?

The short answer is no. Damon won third place in the prestigious Pictures of the Year International competition, which is one of the premier competitions for photojournalists. I have a problem with this. Big problem. In an era where photos are easily manipulated, it's important to provide a reasonably consistent representation of the truth in news photographs. Photographers at newspapers that have manipulated images in Photoshop have been fired for the offence. Histamatic basically does automatically what you could do in Photoshop: It manipulates images beyond acceptable standards for photojournalism.

Sound like a rant? You bet.

You can see Damon's  Histamatic work here.

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