A Photojournalist’s Field Guide: In the trenches with combat photographer Stacy Pearsall

Maintaining Image Integrity

As photography has become accessible to everyone, so have the tools to manipulate it. This goes for photojournalists as well, including myself. Unfortunately, there have been cases where so-called professional journalists have manipulated their photographs to alter the story, but in these rare instances they’ve been called out, publicly shamed, and blacklisted within the community. Don’t be that guy.

When it comes to editing images for photojournalism, you always want to maintain the integrity of the image. Removing a distracting object changes the environment of the picture and also creates doubt as to its authenticity. If you can remove something as simple as a Coke can, who’s to say you didn’t remove an entire person? ...