Picturing "The Other"

A tourist dives off a dock in Key West, Fla. during sunset in August 2010.

That same tourist then joined his friends to watch the sunset.

I took these photos while I was on vacation in Key West, Fla. celebrating the end on my internship with The Miami Herald. I chose to "work" while on vacation because it had been a long time since I had taken photos for myself and not on assignment.
My background as a multimedia journalist helped me compose these photographs and use them to tell a short story. It is very clear that the tourists were jumping off the dock to watch the sunset.
I decided to make the subjects silhouetted so I could properly expose the background. If I tried to keep the subjects lit, I would have needed a flash or to overexpose the background, losing the colors of the Key West sunset.

These same people might take a photograph of me on the dock, because I had multiple cameras with me and a tripod. I did not look like a tourist - I looked like I was working. When taking these pictures, multiple tourists, artists and other photographers approached me to talk about the pictures I was making.
"The Other" would definitely make the assumption that I was working. Their caption would most likely read, "Photographer takes photographs of sunset in Key West, Fla."

I think it is important to take in account the perception of your subject while taking photographs of them - even on vacation. Though I do this on a daily basis for work. It is best to "shoot first, ask questions later." The assumption must be taken into consideration when framing the photograph. I could have just taken a shot of tourists in the water without the sunset and they would not have nearly the purpose, or interest, than if I included the sunset.
A different way of representing "The Others" in this setting would be to ask them to pose for a photograph and let them choose how they wish to be perceived by letting them pose. This is not journalistic, but in this setting, it was not an assignment.

Altering an Image

Altering an image can be extremely detrimental to both a newspaper's reputation and a photographer's career. Many do this to make there image better, but others alter a photograph to make it suitable for publication.
For example: if a photograph had a profane word in it, the editor could simply photoshop it out. I am going to use a photo from the Dove World Outreach Center as an example. This photograph does not have profanity, but it does have some writing in the background that could be offensive to some. The trailer in the back says "International Burn a Koran Day 9/11/2010 6PM-9PM."

Pastor Terry Jones walks out of the Dove World Outreach Center to address the media.

There was a major issue in reporting this story because of the unnecessary attention Pastor Terry Jones was getting. An editor might argue they do not want to advertise the time and place of the Koran burning - so they take out this information in the photograph.

This is the same photograph without the information on the Koran burning in the background. (DO NOT PUBLISH)

As you can see, by taking out the information on the Koran burning it alters the photo significantly. While the Pastor is still walking from his church and addressing the media, the lack of information on the trailer doesn't give the reader an immediate sense of what is going on, where the subject is and why he is in the news.
This is a horrible practice in the news media and has been done many times.
Here is another example of photoshopping an image to improve the look of the image for publication.

The Economist removed certain people from this photograph to give a cleaner look to their cover photo.

This has been an issue since the start of newspaper photo publication. A complete history of altered images can be found at this website: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/