Last Updated on 04/09/2013 by Chris Gampat
Not many people know or really understand what a Photo Editor does at a newspaper or a publication. No, they’re not taking a photographer’s RAWs and doing loads of color correction after massive culls–at least not all the time. Instead, what they’re doing is making crops, adding metadata and maybe some minor brightening or darkening. But their main job is to choose a photo that illustrates the story that the publication is trying to get out to the world. So if a newspaper is reporting on the closing of loads of Starbucks around the nation, they’ll show an image of a storefront or something else creative with the Starbucks logo (maybe even a tall Skinny Vanilla Latte with the Starbucks logo on the cup.)
But today, the Telegraph has chosen a positively brilliant photo to illustrate a story going viral around the web right now. The photo shows former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice holding up a gesture that can easily be mistaken for something else.
And that, ladies and gents, is how some images can easily be misinterpreted–no matter how hysterical they may be.