What is This Halo Around a World Press Photo Nominee?
Late Winter brings about a new crop of contest winners and nary a season goes by without a whiff of controversy in some form or fashion. Yesterday World Press Photo announced its 2020 Photo Contest and Digital Storytelling Contest nominees.
Among the fifteen images selected as nominees was a photo by Mulugeta Ayene who covered the tragic aftermath of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 – one of several downed Boeing 737 MAX airplanes.
It’s a decisive moment to be sure with a caption that explains the action, “A relative of a victim of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 throws dirt in her face as she mourns at the crash site, on 14 March.”
But if you look at the figure behind the two women on camera left, you’ll notice a strange halo that only seems to extend around his head and the collar of his jacket. It doesn’t look like typical chromatic aberration, which usually expresses itself as purple fringing.
There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation, but no technical information other than the camera model (Canon 5D Mark III) is included with the image description.
Secondly, photo contests need to be in the business of transparency if they want to avoid controversy. If the jury saw this aberration and decided it didn’t need to be explained, I think the organization should reconsider its position. Photo contests are constantly under criticism (this piece is no exception), and they need to de-risk their relationship with a skeptical public by erring on the side of overcommunication.
Finally, for those who don’t understand what the big deal is, consider that even though we bandy about the term “fake news” with abandon, most journalists and photojournalist work within an ethical framework set out by their professional organizations and/or publishers. When a visible aberration like this halo appears without explanation, we have to wonder what else might have been edited within the frame.
I think the curve on the back of his head and neck looks unnatural, also.
I wonder if the halo WAS caused by chromatic aberration, and the purple fringing was neutralized in post processing, leaving a slightly darker grey tone behind in its place?
“… one of several downed Boeing 737 MAX airplanes.”
There have been two.
Maybe a handful of dirt that she is flinging onto her face. You know, funeral, gravesite, soil, grief, the customs of another culture, a loved one’s righteous fury…
Processing issues. Try to add clarity to an entire image when something is really out of focus in the background. Halo will appear.
Strange. Nobody ever seems to ask the photographer about these things. I just did, on Twitter. We’ll see what, if anything, he has to say.
I’ve had similar issues with canon 5d files when trying to lower the brightness in an area that was a bit overexposed and having too much contrast. Working in 8bit the area between darkness and highlight created a halo such as we see here. However going back to the RAW file and editing in a 16bit image allowed me to get an natural and correct lowering of brightness. I obviously don’t know what the photogrpaher did here, but he may well simply have tried a natural adjustement of brightness and contrast, but not known how to deal with the limitations the 5D files sometimes have when working in 8Bit.