When location is not enough

Wherever possible I have been discussing the Exposing The Wild captioning system with fellow photographers. Some have been skeptical and others enthusiastic.

One peer commented that she sees no benefit in the classification of wild and captive animals, stating that she would rather include the location the photograph was taken in the caption. This, she believes, gives people enough of an idea about the situation a photograph was taken in to make the Exposing The Wild captioning system irrelevant.

However, is this not assuming a huge knowledge base? There are a huge number of deer parks and animal parks in the UK. Is a viewer expected to have heard of all of these? Even mainstays of the wildlife photography community such as the British Wildlife Center are not well known throughout the general public.

Perhaps my colleague assumes viewers will be able to guess the nature of a location by its name. However, this also has its problems. Is it immediately obvious that the Cotswold Wildlife Center, for example, is effectively a zoo?

There are also situations where even knowing the nature of a location will not be enough to get a flavour of the of the animal's situation. A perfect example of this is WWT Slimbridge. Slimbridge is famous for having the largest collection of wildfowl in the UK. However, spread throughout these captive birds and visible from Slimbridge's hides are an equally large number of wild birds. Some of these are even the same species as the captive birds!

How is a viewer supposed to judge whether an image shows a wild Tufted Duck on the estuary or a collection bird with clipped wings? It is usually immediately obvious to the photographer, so is adding six little characters really too much to ask?

The Exposing The Wild Captioning System

If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times; images are powerful. However, there is one sure-fire way of sucking the power out of an image leaving little more than shapes and colours. That is to question its integrity.

Integrity is the wildlife photography buzzword of the day. It is questioned as much as claimed, but there is no real way of measuring it. A photographer's reputation is the sum of their honesty, their ethical practice, their photograph's integrity, and any perceived breaches of these. A photograph's integrity is based upon the not only on the photographer's reputation, but also the circumstances in which it was taken, how much it has been processed, and whether this is declared.

Currently, there is no standard way for photographers to declare how photographs were taken. Many photographers commendably state that image were "taken under controlled conditions", but what exactly are controlled conditions? I am sure everyone agrees that a falconry bird flown over a photographer's head certainly constitutes controlled conditions, but how about Stags in deer parks, or baited animals? Both are certainly controlled to some extent but it is debatable whether this is enough to constitute controlled conditions.

Other photographers add the world "captive" or a capitol C to their images as they think appropriate. This is just as commendable but just as ambiguous as adding "taken under controlled conditions". Is an Elephant left to behave as wild in an enclosure the size of an English county captive or wild? I can see both sides of the coin. Unlike the mice it undoubtedly lives with, the Elephant's huge natural territory means its movements are still constrained by humans, but this makes it no easier to photograph.

Similar ambiguities exist in the world of Digital Manipulation. Some maintain digital manipulation includes all "photoshopping", others state that global exposure and colour edits do not count whereas local edits do, while others believe that a subject or background has to be moved, removed, or added to count.

Ambiguities such as these can lead to the integrity of photographers and their photographs being unfairly questioned over simple misunderstandings. It is impossible for photographers to write detailed captions for all of their photographs containing all relevant information, yet they can easily be caught out when they do not.

Because of these worries, I have devised a quick and easy coding system for Exposing The Wild with the aid of Samuel Waldron that uses a code to summarise all relevant information. The system does not aim to judge, it simply categorises images to minimize their potential to mislead viewers unintentionally.

Post Processing

Images are split into one of four categories depending upon how much they have been edited:

PP0 - photographs that have undergone no post processing.
PP1 - photographs that have been subjected to global edits*.
PP2 - photographs that have been subjected to local edits**.
PP3 - photographs where subjects or backgrounds have been added moved or removed.

*Any edits that affect the entirety of the image, e.g. colour balance, curves, or contrast.
**Any edits affecting only part of an image, e.g. graduated filters, dodging and burning.

Captive Animals

Captive animals (including captured wild animals) are split into three categories:

CA1 - Captive animals that behave as wild in large enclosures.
CA2 - Captive animals whose behaviour is partially controlled.
CA3 - Captive animals whose behaviour is completely controlled*.

*e.g. trained animal models, falconry birds, and studio animals.

Wild Animals

Wild animals are also split into three categories:

WA1 - Wild animals whose behaviour is not affected by humans.
WA2 - Wild animals baited or attracted by humans.
WA3 - Wild animals habituated to the presence of humans.

The relevant codes are simply added to the end of captions to furnish the viewer with as much information as possible. For example, an image of a wild Blue Tit attracted to a Oxfordshire bird feeder where the exposure, colour balance, and contrast had been globally edited would be captioned as:

"Blue Tit, Oxfordshire, WA2, PP1."

Even if all photographers immediately adopted the Exposing The Wild captioning system and all images were correctly labelled, I am sure there would still be just enough ambiguity left to spark the occasional controversy. However, this will not put me off from promoting the system and adopting it on all of my own images. I am simply not prepared to do nothing.

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Edit: My Exposing The Wild colleague Samuel Waldron has also discussed this topic but has looked at it in a slightly different way. His enlightening discussion can be found here.

A Statement at Last

A few minutes ago my phone rang, suddenly reminding me that there are other things in the world than than the code for my upcoming website. On the other end of the phone was Sam Waldron, rousing me further from my trance-like state of geekery to inform me that Jose Luis Rodrigez has been stripped of the title of BBC wildlife photographer of the year.

A statement on the competition's website states that "it was likely that the wolf featured in the image was an animal model that can be hired for photographic purposes and, as a result, the image had been entered in breach of rule 10 of the 2009 Competition."

The rule in question stated that images taken of captive animals must be declared as such, and that preference would be given to images of wild animals by judges.

These allegations are denied by the photographer, but as the rules equally clearly state "the decision of the judges is final." As such Rodriguez has been stripped of his title, and the £10,000 that would shortly have been headed in his way. Rodriguez will find little comfort in the fact that he is being allowed to keep the £500 he received as a category winner in place of any royalty payments the image has earned the competition thus far.

To me it is completely appalling that someone could enter a competition with an image that does not comply with the rules. Not only this but after winning Rodriguez simply lied about the methodology behind his photograph at events including WildPhotos.

I should imagine that for all those who entered the competition in 2009 the experience has now been severely tainted. I have had many conversations about past winners of the competition where I have fondly remembered "that backlit shot of the polar bear" or "the shot of the starling flock and sparrow hawk". The public will now not remember 2009 fondly as "the year with the jumping wolf shot" but instead as "the year with that fake wolf shot".

Not only this but it is the first year ever where no winner has been declared. The judges rightly decided that they could not fairly award the title to another photographer as the competition are judged blind and after the awards ceremony this would not be possible. Those photographers closest to receiving the reward will undoubtedly feel cheated.

Within an hour of an announcement the news is already being greeted as wildlife photography's biggest ever scandal, taking the crown from the 2003 revelations that photographs in the National Geographic of a kingfisher fishing for mayflies were of a stuffed museum specimen.

As well as being scandalous, to me Rodriguez's actions are tantamount to fraud. This was an attempt to dishonestly receive a converted title as well as £10,000. I believe this to be criminal as well as dishonest.

Scandals such as these unfairly damage the reputation of photographers worldwide. I hope we will be able to move on from this and continue to focus on the undeniably worthwhile conservation causes wildlife photographers throughout the world continue to attempt to highlight and continue to appreciate their art. Just because one photographer was dishonest does not mean all are and does not in any way detract from the beliefs, honesty, or skill of other photographers.