- People who know it isn't a picture of Neil Armstrong and feel like they need to point that out.
- People who are bothered by the slight inaccuracy that it isn't a picture taken of him.
Either way, he took the picture. He took one of the most famous pictures.
If the caption to the picture reads "Buzz Aldrin as captured by Neil Armstrong", who cares? Have you ever seen a caption which says that it is Neil Armstrong? I haven't. People just assume it is because he is the best known since he was the first man on the moon.
Slight?
Jyap, I think you're wrong on this one and digging yourself a bigger whole. In journalism, it's certainly an obvious problem. But even amongst amateurs who prefer accuracy, it's clearly a problem. A picture of a different person is hardly a "slight inaccuracy". It is a complete and major innacuracy.
Umm the fact that its a picture of some one else is way more than a "slight" inaccuracy.
you could probably replace photos of Stalin and Churchill and no one would care about that "slight inaccuracy" :)
Surely, that would only be a slight detail.
I _effin_ care. E.g. I want a picture of Neil Armstrong for my article. Not a picture that _he_ took of somebody else. Not a quick sketch he did of his cat. I want a picture of HIM, preferably on the moon.
That he "took the picture" is meaningless for the purposes of _showing_ the man in action. If I was writing about Knuth I wouldn't post a picture of McCarthy he took and caption it "John McCarthy as captured by D. Knuth".
As someone who used to do photo editing for a newspaper, I assure you that this is Photo Editing 101. Your arguments are loco.
Neil is visible in the photo, in the reflection on Aldrin's visor. In this photo which he took while walking ON THE MOON. Which, if you take a step back and lose the journalistic tendentiousness, you will realize makes this about as cool as any picture ever taken.
If I want to depict Neil Amstrong, the "coolness" of a picture showing some other guy does not come into play at all.
Isn't it obvious?
I mean, seriously, "as cool as any picture ever taken"? "visible on the reflection on the visor"?
A) Use the mentioned picture as the centerpiece to their article.
B) State incorrectly that it is a picture of Neil Armstrong.
Neither is likely to happen. It is just a common misconception that it is a picture of Neil Armstrong since it is the most famous picture of the mission and because people know Neil Armstrong. People see the picture and assume it is Neil Armstrong. Credible publications won't use the picture.
The parent article makes out that there aren't many pictures of Neil Armstrong. They will most likely use the one mentioned taken by Buzz Aldrin or this one:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...
You'd be surprised. With the cost cutting of proof checking and editorial departments, and the rush to catch internet time news, I've seen much much worse misattributions and even hoaxes running around in respectable publications (far from only online ones).
Also, every single image you see of Saturn from Cassini has been manipulated. Almost every photo of Mars from Curiosity is manipulated. So what then?
Sure, but not much sillier that saying that putting up a picture of a different person is a "slight inaccuracy".
>Also, every single image you see of Saturn from Cassini has been manipulated. Almost every photo of Mars from Curiosity is manipulated. So what then?
Notice how I, unlike TFA, never said anything about manipulation? I only raised the issue that we DO care a lot, as photo editors (1), if it's a picture of Neil in the article or if it's a picture he took of Buzz.
But, since you ask, you show those images with an explicit notice that they are manipulated. If they were images of events with political aspects, war images, images or persons etc they would not be published manipulated, but in this case we are talking about essential manipulation (stitching, colour correction, move to the visible spectrum, etc), and not creative image doctoring like pasting some space or removing a person USSR style.
(1) And presumably as readers. You don't just put out some different image that one assumes from the article content and then except readers to check the caption (which they seldom do). All sorts of perception manipulation can be carried out that way.
