Tampa Photography Blog

President Barack Obama visited Tampa, Florida Tuesday to have a town hall meeting at the University of Tampa. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio greeted him as any city representative would and he happened to lean in and bow during the moment. Some saw this as an unnecessary act, considering Iorio is a mayor, not a national political figure.

St. Pete Times photographer Edmund Fountain simply did his job as a photojournalist and documented what he saw during the event. His caption read that Obama leaned in to hear Iorio but when the Associated Press ran the photo, the caption was changed to say that Obama bowed to her.

Those gestures are very different but what's more upsetting is when someone else takes the liberty of adding their own narrative to a photo. It happened occasionally when I worked in newspapers during the first five years of my career. It's happens more often when there's a natural disaster or major news-worthy event and editors want to make the photo more appealing by adding a story line that didn't exist.