News and photography agency Reuters has recently issued a statement triggering an outright ban on photographs captured and handed in RAW format.
Freelance contributors have instead being asked to only submit images that were processed and stored as JPEG inside the camera.
As per Reuters, there are 2 reasons for this action – one, there’s the matter of alacrity: RAW photos required to be processed by the photographer and that takes a lot of time – and when someone is reporting on a breaking story, one does not get much time; secondly, Reuters wants its snaps to closely reflect reality (journalistic), and it is thoughtful that some RAW snaps are being processed to a point where they do not stay real.
Speaking to PetaPixel, a Reuters spokesperson said that as photojournalists working for the world’s largest international multimedia news provider, Reuters Pictures photographers work in line with their Photographer’s Handbook as well as the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. As eyewitness accounts of events covered by dedicated and responsible journalists, Reuters Pictures must reflect reality. While they aim for photography of the highest aesthetic quality, their goal is not to artistically interpret the news.
Reuters sent a note to their freelance photographers saying they would like to pass on “a note of request to our freelance contributors due to a worldwide policy change. In future, please don’t send photos to Reuters that were processed from RAW or CR2 files. If you want to shoot raw images that’s fine, just take JPEGs at the same time. Only send us the photos that were originally JPEGs, with minimal processing (cropping, correcting levels, etc).”
Tags: Episode, Flash, Learn, Photography