Associated Press photographer's video shows 'travel photographers' staging photos

Why you are not talking about american photographers doing the same? Or they are simply all innocent in this sense ? Why always chinese (or chinese-looking) guys are doing 'wrong' ?

Does anyone really believe that the presence of two or three cameras a few feet away doesn't ALWAYS change the subjects behavior? It's hard to believe such a person really exists.

Nothing wrong with people posing for photographs. Just need to keep track of which photos are posed, with are journalistic, and which are posed with money changing hands in return. The latter can be traded, though obviously need to be disclosed to a buyer that they're posed. But most illustrative stock work involving people is posed. Nobody really imagines the Jeep wranger was driven to the top of Mt Whitney. .. or that Italians walk around Rome dressed as Imperial Legionnaires. For free posed photos people often want me to send them a copy, which I'll happily do.

Instead, I strongly suspect the real beef here is that Mr Professional is facing competition from people with well paying jobs and no interest in making money from their artistic pursuits, while doing a better job than him. So to him it's probably about class and status. *shrug*

Not sure why people are surprised by this. To be successful in media and art you have to be able to tell a good story. If at the end of the day, you "wrote" a story that people found entertaining, than you will be praised for it--not matter how you "came up" with the story.

It's just like all those professional bloggers who lead you on to believe that they are "just like you and me": sharing their dinner recipes, and vacation photos portraying a "dream life" that you can have too! Only, what they (often) don't tell you is that you're the one paying their 6-figure income, with sponsored links, ads, views, and so on.

It's not "wrong"--they're opportunitests. It's holistally a product that we crave to consume--entertainment.

Truly disgusting. Many shameless professional photographers offer money to local people to make them pose the way they want. Then they go home & publish their travel photography works without explaining how they shamelessly approached people & bribed them. Happens all the time.

Bullshitography!

Looks like a lot of people judging Mr Ahad are the kind of people who think that this is OK, so for balance I'm saying it's not OK.
Not because a designated 'professional' deserves to get the picture over anyone else, but because I think that re-enacting this kind of shot or pose and pretending that it's authentic is lazy and disturbing, and possibly exploitative. It doesn't tell us anything about anything other than a different coloured person in a country far far away does something exotically different in his every day life that you might not expect to see in your day to day life back home, and how quaint that is. It's suggestive, at best.
Shooting models and directing them for say, a paid editorial shoot (yes, the model gets paid too) is an entirely different proposal.
Passing something as authentic real life travel documentary capture when you know fully well it aint is unethical and exploitative on so many levels regardless if the model was willing or paid or not.

If those photographers dont's present their work as photojournalism, I don't see anything wrong with staging.

Many are shooting models and directing them. This isn't any different.

I cannot see the problem with tourist asking people to pose for them. they are in the station for a short period of time and want to catch some thing to show back home. If Mr Ahad want to create a series of images of the train station he can include these type of interactions to tell the story of this location.

The mistake we make as consumers of the media is believing that it is objective. Almost all media offers a subjective viewpoint. The duty is upon the consumer to form their own viewpoint, knowing that there is bias in everything that has been presented as objective truth. Staging a photograph, or even choosing which photos to submit to an editor, is the photographer's way of introducing their own bias.

This is not surprising at all. There are "travel writers" who never visit the places they are writing about.

Terrible way to depict press photography. A lot of my subjects do not even know I am taking photos of them. If this represents Press Photography, then I am glad I am not part of this farce. Ethically speaking, I would have problem looking at those photos I have taken given the circumstances. Really not my cup of tea!

How is this different than what Steve McCurry did throughout his career?

Just be the best Professional and leave all the amateurs and "would be" professionals far(t) behind you............

Both fake news and photos exist. No surprise.

Mr. Ahad seems to think that because he is a professional photographer his wants and desires trump those that are not.

Seems pretty arrogant to me.

I guess I supposed struggle to get myself outraged? Don't see the issue. When professional photographers have whole scale production to push a political agenda – it is a problem and happens all the time. When some travel photographer asks someone to stick head out for a better shot – fantastic! Why not?

I've no issue with this, I'd do the same, it's just a travel photo. Where I draw the line are photos that change reality, and the biggest problem here are photo journalists who manufacture a photo that does not represent the actual situation, and in doing so cause people (who put pressure on governments) to react the wrong way. It's reached a stage where I distrust any image I see in the media, especially from the world conflicts.

I'm afraid the awards are so conceited these days that much like Cycling and steroid use you have to be staging your photos if you want to have something the judges deem worthy. Its like the photo can't just be striking anymore it has to have a message (hopefully a political one). Well this is what you get if you reward those type of shots. Nobody should be surprised.

I guess his paid fixer was good friends with the paid fixer of the tourists. Go find something for yourself and show the world something that you are bringing to the conversation.

Nat Geo shooters stage photos EVERY issue.
Travel photography ethics ≠ news photography ethics.
"Professional etiquette" = don't step in front of active shooting.

When I read that story on PetaPixel about a month ago*, my thought was: You should have waited to see if someone won a photojournalism award for their staged photo, and expose the fraud. Otherwise, if this is art, advertising, stock, or travel photography, then nothing to complain about, Mr. "professional photographer" person.

* Note to DPreview: I am not quite sure what's the train of thought that leads you to repost stuff that was on PetaPixel one month earlier. The unkind interpretation is that you're thinking that only 10% of your readers saw the PP post, 10% of those remember it, and 10% of those would care to post here something about it. So, 0.001 odds of getting exposed --> go for it. The not-unkind interpretation of it is...well, I can't think of any not-unkind interpretation. Please stop it. Just 'cause you can write a piece with fewer typos than PetaPixel doesn't justify the 1 month lag.

I've read the Facebook post.
Is it largely an issue of outsiders stealing photo opportunities that should 'rightly' be his?

I heard Da Vinci also staged The Last Supper. I knew something didn't look right.

Yuk. I stage corporate shots all the time, but that's to optimize them to help a client gain customers or market share. For "I just happened across this" travel photography in search of an award seems wrong to me.

This guy is an unbearable hypocrite. Why would tourists not be allowed to stage the same photos as all the so-called professionals? Welcome to the 21st century!

I worked in the media for eight years - including at a national newspaper - and at least half of the photos that ran in the three newspapers I worked at were staged (or at least posed).

Kind of similar to passing off cheap composites off as "art". I've seen quite a few that try to mimic "one-in-a-million" timed shots but were actually created through layers in photoshop. Same thing... but what do you do about it?

I think the photographer(s) should be invited to the grand stage to receive the award, and at the last minute everybody should be like, "nah, we're kidding, the award was just staged because we were live-streaming your reaction" - look at all the clicks and views we got"

You are just rehashing an article that is a month old.

Seriously, guys. Do better.

Photographers, posing their subjects since 1839:
https://petapixel.com/2011/07/19/the-first-self-portrait-photo-ever-made/

(btw, also the first 'selfie')

What else is new, not that shocking. When possible, people always tend to cheat.

Of course no Professional would ~ever~ ask their subjects to pose, hold a certain facial expression, or move towards better light. Yeah, right.

Even people taking inane family vacation photos get their kids (or try to) stand still and hold a certain way for photos. Always have and always will.

How is this different?

Fake news, fake photographs, fake Russia investigation, fake space...etc

Don't forget, the press is just a tool for those who own it.

In legal terms, this is fraud and false.

"They are all around making images and ruining things for professional photographers."

Oh dear. How dare they ruin things for 'professional photographers' ?

Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized his doctorate's his doctoral degree dissertation and nobody cried but now because some kid staged a pose, the world of photojournalism is collapsing.

Does no one edit this stuff before it goes on the web? The headline is extremely misleading. If you read the story, these aren't travel photographers, they're "a large number of camera-wielding tourists." He later refers to them as "foreign tourists." In the PetaPixel article he calls them "Malaysian and Chinese tourists."
Not one word about about photographers from Conde Nast Traveler or Merian or Today's Traveler or any other travel pub.
But the real journalism scandal here is the author throwing in foreign terms without a translation (and no, expecting the reader to control-click on the word or phrase is not appropriate or professional. There are too many ways that the words in question could be incorrectly interpreted based on cultural unfamiliarity).

I'm confused. Are these photographers trying to pass these posed photos as un-posed? Methinks Ahad just feels his own award-winning images aren't getting the recognition he believes they deserve.