Photographers Are on Mission to Fix Wikipedia's Famously Bad Celebrity Portraits

https://www.404media.co/photographers-are-on-a-mission-to-fix-wikipedias-famously-bad-celebrity-portraits/

by m463 • 1 year ago

33 40 1 year ago

lxgr3• 1 year ago

I've always wondered: Do celebrities and public figures (or at least their agents) not have any intrinsic motivation to maybe provide better photos themselves?

lupusreal• 1 year ago

Are they allowed to, or would Wikipedia lawyers strike it for "original research" or something? From what I've seen and heard they don't even allow people to correct their own birth date unless they get some third party newspaper to print it first.

jmm5• 1 year ago

Yes, and they even let you email them in to make it easier.

Freak_NL4• 1 year ago

They wouldn't even have to touch Wikipedia. Just upload a permissively licensed photo to Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons inclusion policy literally states:

Is it likely to be useful to a Wikimedia Foundation project? For example, can you point to a Wikipedia article that would benefit from this file's inclusion?

So just slap it on there, and let the Wikipedians handle it from there.

gruez• 1 year ago

The "original research" rule only applies to facts. Take a look at a few photos on wikipedia and you'll find many (most?) of them are uploaded there by the creator, not copied from another publication.

jjmarr• 1 year ago

Photographs and other original media are an exemption to the original research policy because otherwise it'd be impossible to get images in articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...

Because of copyright laws in several countries, there may be relatively few images available for use on Wikipedia. Editors are therefore encouraged to upload their own images, releasing them under appropriate Creative Commons licenses or other free licenses. Original images created by a Wikimedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments, the core reason behind the "No original research" policy.

Freak_NL4• 1 year ago

The celebrity quoted in the article seemed eager to have his picture taken for the express purpose of getting it on Wikipedia, so you'd think that some of their agents would have gotten the message by now.

Pay a photographer, release the photo under some CC licence, slap it on Wikimedia Commons, and leave a message on the talk-page (“Hey, this recent photo looks better, can we use that?”), and done.

Weird how that doesn't seem to happen that often, despite many celebrities apparently really wanting it.

cratermoon3• 1 year ago

Pay a photographer, release the photo under some CC licence

The person who buys a photographer's work doesn't get to change the license. Unless you pay a photographer a great deal of money to transfer the rights, the license is what the photographer (or photo agency) says it is.

alistairSH2• 1 year ago

As the sibling said, that's not generally how photography licensing works (the photographer usually retains the rights to the photo and licenses it for specific use).

But, that also wouldn't stop a celebrity (or their agent) from taking a nice selfie, or picking a family candid, or whatever other photo looks better than whatever is posted currently. Or just paying a slightly larger sum to the photographer to transfer rights or release under CC or whatever.

I'm surprised it isn't a priority - I assume most celebs have a media team already (at least celebs I'm likely to have heard of) but some still have really awful Wiki portraits.

snowwrestler• 1 year ago

It’s way more impactful to manage the words on the page, since those are a source for other Internet actors like search engines and AI. It’s also way easier to hide the fingerprints of text changes, so there are PR agencies that specialize in that.

Wikipedia is not a source for images, though, it’s a client. And it’s harder to hide fingerprints since you have to disclose ownership of the copyright in order to issue Wikipedia a license to use the image.

jasonjayr• 1 year ago

The photographer owns the copyright, and would want to be paid to release the rights in a wikipedia-apropriate way.

Most of the amateur celebrity photography on wikipedia are happy to donate their images to the cause.

As much fun as it is to idolize and eleveate celebrities, they are just employees in another business, they'd have to arrange some way for a photographer (or themselves) to take a better picture and then CC license it.

jetrink• 1 year ago

they'd have to arrange some way for a photographer (or themselves) to take a better picture and then CC license it.

That sounds like something a publicist could easily do if it were a priority. Actors and publicists have no trouble managing their IMDB pages and IMDB even charges for the ability to contribute.

lxgr3• 1 year ago

Yes, but doesn't that still seem like a no-brainer from a marketing/public relations perspective?

dylan6043• 1 year ago

You say this as if it would be impossible for a celeb to find a photog that would be willing to release said copyright. Most photogs just want to be paid for their service. They understand what taking a portrait for said purpose of releasing rights to a CC license would mean. If they, for whatever reason, decide no, then the celeb can move to the next photog on the list that is a mile and a half long, and that's just the photogs within a 50 mile radius of wherever they are currently standing

ViktorRay• 1 year ago

Well then why wouldn’t the celebrities just do that?

Pay someone to do a good photo and then pay them to license it with a Creative Commons license for Wikipedia use. Or just pay them to make it public domain.

This is assuming the celebrities care about their Wikipedia pages.

triceratops• 1 year ago

they'd have to arrange some way for a photographer (or themselves) to take a better picture and then CC license it.

Passport photo studio will do it for $20. Depending on the celeb they might even do it free. /s

mystified5016• 1 year ago

Do you think there's not one single photographer on the continent willing to take a headshot for a one-time payment? Or that no celebrity has even one PR person who can set up a basic shoot?

This is not a real problem in the real world. You can simply pay someone for the license to a photo. You can simply have a photo done in-house so you own the copyright. There are countless alternatives here

throawayonthe• 1 year ago

https://www.wikiportraits.org/

glitchc• 1 year ago

Realistic (read candid/unplanned) photographs are best. I would hate to see Wiki portraits replaced with the front covers of Time and Vogue.

the__alchemist• 1 year ago

Concur. Photographers are universally unwilling to not use heavy post-processing.

southernplaces7• 1 year ago

Very serious hobby photographer here. Not all of us follow this tedious tendency. Of course it depends on the photographic niche but even in mine, which is a mix of social, street and fine art/abstract photography, I avoid as much as possible anything except a bit of cropping and minor contrast adjustments with the most basic digital tools. Specifically, I detest massive post processing of photos, since it seems dishonest and a cheap way to cover for a lack of willingness to learn composing better shots.

And don't even get me started on the utter dreck of so-called photographers using AI tools like Adobe's Firefly crap (good tools, but crap in the context of this specific rant) to "seamlessly and realistically" move or erase objects in photos. If you're going that far with manipulating your photos, why bother taking them in the first place?

everdrive• 1 year ago

Agreed, this move seems like wasted effort at best.

lxgr3• 1 year ago

Definitely not as a general rule. Many of the Wikipedia photos in question are celebrities mid-sentence, speaking at some fan convention, taken from a bad angle and digitally zoomed in.

There's a middle ground between that and a professional set card.

stego-tech2• 1 year ago

I love that this is a project. Heck, I’d sign up myself for the Boston/New England beat if I had more confidence in my portraiture skills. Never really considered the only thing holding back better portraits on Wikipedia was the need for a photographer willing to sacrifice the revenue on one shot for a greater cause.

giarc2• 1 year ago

"greater cause" when referring to better pictures of rich, famous celebrities??

stego-tech2• 1 year ago

Greater cause in the general sense of contributing to the world's largest repository of free information, and waiving rights to profit off of your work so others can benefit from it.

And yes, frustratingly this includes celebrities. These are people of outsized impact and/or import in society, and they need to be identifiable so that they can be held accountable.

6stringmerc• 1 year ago

Anybody else remember “celebrities” going legal against IMDB for listing their year of birth? Just remember this is a vanity project, not a drive to enhance documentation accuracy.

piokoch• 1 year ago

Amazing that anyone is willing to make an effort and subscribe to some random media portal with 80% content generated by chat GPT and alikes, just to read an article about replacing photo of the man, whose girlfriend has the same age since 30 years, with a different photo of the same guy.

ninetyninenine• 1 year ago

Just use ai.

Photographers Are on Mission to Fix Wikipedia's Famously Bad Celebrity Portraits

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