Chapter 32 — Exercises

Ethics is learned the way light is learned: not by memorizing rules but by practicing judgment on real situations until the judgment becomes yours. Most of these exercises ask you to decide — to read a loaded frame, to weigh a hard case, to ask a stranger, to audit your own work — rather than to chase a technical effect. A phone is a perfect tool for every one of them; the camera was never the variable here either. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do the starred and odd-numbered items at minimum; model answers and critiques for those live in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Several of these feed your Portfolio's ethics audit — keep your notes.

A standing rule for this chapter's shooting exercises: if a real person is identifiable, get their consent appropriately, and never publish anyone in a way you could not defend with the four-question fairness test (Figure 32.2). The exercise is not worth a violation.

Part A — Reading the loaded frame (Read the Frame)

Exercise 32.1 ⭐ — Name the invisible decisions. Re-read Figure 32.1 ("The man on the bench"). In one sentence each, name the four ethical decisions that are invisible in the image itself: consent, privacy expectation, truthfulness of the implied story, and intended publication. The point is to see that none of these are answered by the picture.

Exercise 32.2 ⭐⭐ — Extraction vs. collaboration. Study Figure 32.4 ("The shelter, two ways"). List every concrete difference between Version A and Version B that you can find — not vibes, but choices (camera height, light, caption, consent, the subject's agency). Then state which single change you think matters most, and defend it in two sentences.

Exercise 32.3 ⭐⭐ — Which contract? For each of these images, name the documentary contract it falls under (Figure 32.3) and what alterations would and would not be allowed: (a) a front-page news photo of a flood; (b) a magazine beauty cover; (c) a fine-art composite of three skies; (d) a real-estate listing of a kitchen; (e) a wedding portrait. One sentence per image.

Exercise 32.4 ⭐⭐⭐ — Spot the broken promise. Write a short Described Photograph (use the six fields) of an image that would be perfectly ethical under one contract and a serious violation under another — the same described scene, same edit, two verdicts. Name both contracts and explain why the identical edit is honest in one and deceptive in the other.

Part B — Asking, and the cost of asking (Shoot This)

Exercise 32.5 ⭐ — The first ask. Approach one stranger today whose face, light, or moment catches you, and ask — out loud, as a person — to make a portrait. State your use. Make declining easy. Whether they say yes or no, write three sentences afterward on how it felt and what you would say differently next time. (The reps are the lesson; the photo is a bonus.)

Exercise 32.6 ⭐⭐ — Five consented portraits. At your busy intersection or market, make five portraits of strangers with their informed consent. For each, you must be able to say afterward: who they think you are, what they think the photo is for, and where they understand it may appear. Shoot ~20 attempts, expect rejections, keep the 3 strongest yeses. Note your acceptance rate without judgment.

Exercise 32.7 ⭐⭐ — The same scene, both ways. Find one situation you could shoot either as a stolen candid or as a consented frame (a vendor, a musician, a person at work). Make it both ways: once unaware, once after asking. Keep both. Write which you feel cleaner about publishing and exactly why — and whether asking actually hurt the picture.

Exercise 32.8 ⭐⭐⭐ — The release in the wild. Create a plain-language pocket model release (name, date, a one-line grant of editorial/portfolio use, signature line). Use it for real with one consenting subject — digital or paper. Reflect: did producing it change the interaction? Did the subject ask better questions once a form appeared? Keep the release as a template for your kit.

Part C — Hard cases (judgment under pressure)

For each case, write a short ruling: what you would do, which principle decides it, and what additional information would change your answer. There is rarely one correct answer — the reasoning is graded, not the verdict. The discipline these build is the whole point of §32.6: by reasoning through hard cases now, in calm, you spend your judgment in advance, so the real version arrives already half-decided. Write your ruling before you read the model answer.

Exercise 32.9 ⭐⭐ — The grieving stranger. At a public roadside accident, you can make a powerful, legal photograph of a stranger weeping over a wrecked car. The light is dramatic; the moment is raw; it might be the strongest frame you make all year. Do you make it? Walk the four-question fairness test aloud and decide. Then decide separately whether taking it and publishing it identifiably are different questions with potentially different answers — and what changes if you are a working photojournalist on assignment versus a hobbyist who happened to be passing. Name the one piece of information that would most move your verdict.

Exercise 32.10 ⭐⭐ — The flattering lie. A paying portrait client looks at their proofs and asks you to "just make me look ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter" for a professional headshot that will run on both a dating profile and a company "leadership team" website. Where, if anywhere, do you draw the line between flattering retouching (which they're entitled to) and a misrepresentation that will set up a real-world disappointment? How do you explain your line to them warmly, without lecturing and without losing the client? Write the actual sentences you'd say. (Connect to Chapter 29's enhancement/deception line and §32.3's "don't change who they fundamentally are.")

Exercise 32.11 ⭐⭐⭐ — The single cloned object. You are a photojournalist. Your best frame of a city-council vote has a bright exit sign in the corner that pulls the eye. Cloning it out would make a stronger image and no one would ever know. Argue both sides in two short paragraphs, then give your ruling and the principle behind it.

Exercise 32.12 ⭐⭐⭐ — The community that said no. On assignment abroad, you are told by a local guide that photographing a particular ceremony is forbidden — it is sacred, and outsiders' cameras are unwelcome — though no law stops you, no one would physically prevent you, and the images would be extraordinary and almost certainly publishable. You will likely never return to this place. What do you do? Then go deeper: distinguish your potential reasons for complying (fear of getting caught? respect for the people? worry about your reputation?) and decide which of those reasons you'd want to be true of yourself. Your answer reveals whether you treat consent as a courtesy you extend when convenient or a duty you owe regardless of consequences.

Exercise 32.13 ⭐⭐ — The child at the festival. A delightful candid of a laughing child at a public street festival. The light is perfect; the parents are nearby but unaware. List the conditions under which you would (a) keep it for yourself only, (b) post it publicly, (c) license it commercially — and why those three uses have three different bars.

Part D — Fix the Photo (diagnose and prescribe)

The diagnose-and-prescribe drill is the core ethical-repair skill: see exactly what went wrong, name the principle each failure violates, and prescribe the concrete change that fixes it. Treat each described shot like a doctor reading a chart — specific symptoms, specific remedies, no hand-waving.

Exercise 32.14 ⭐⭐ — Fix the extraction. A described failed shot: a man sleeping in a doorway, shot from directly above with a wide lens that crowds in on him, harsh on-camera flash raking the grime, captioned "Forgotten," posted to 10,000 followers, no word ever exchanged and no consent. Diagnose every ethical failure you can find — count at least four — and for each name the principle it violates (consent default, power gap, dignity/camera height, representation/labeling, publication scale). Then prescribe the specific re-shoot and re-handling that would make an honest version: each change, and the principle it serves. Be concrete enough that someone could follow your prescription tomorrow.

Exercise 32.15 ⭐⭐ — Fix the exotic. A described failed shot: a young person in traditional dress, smartphone cloned out to look "timeless," sold as a stock image titled "Ancient Culture." Identify which outsider's-lens failures are present and prescribe the honest alternative, including what the caption and edit should and should not do.

Exercise 32.16 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the contract violation. A described failed shot: a documentary photo essay on a protest in which the photographer composited a more dramatic sky from another day "for impact," undisclosed. Explain which contract was broken and why disclosure alone would not fully repair this genre — then prescribe what the photographer should have done instead.

Part E — Eye Training & the Light Log (no camera required)

Exercise 32.17 ⭐ — The consent audit of your camera roll. Scroll your own phone's camera roll and count: of the identifiable strangers in it, how many did you have any consent from? No judgment — just the number. Write one sentence on what that number tells you about your default.

Exercise 32.18 ⭐⭐ — The dignity read. For one day, notice photographs of people in the media around you (news, ads, social feeds) and silently run the dignity checklist on three of them: eye level or above? a name or a label? agency or caught? who benefits, who risks? Add the sharpest example to your Light Log with a sentence on what made it dignified or extractive.

Exercise 32.19 ⭐⭐ — The power-gap inventory. Without a camera, list five situations in your own life where, if you raised a camera, a power gap would exist between you and the subject. For each, name what would make photographing it fair, and what would make it exploitative. This trains you to feel the gap before you shoot.

Exercise 32.20 ⭐⭐⭐ — Reverse the lens. Imagine you are the subject. Describe, in a paragraph, the single photograph of yourself you would least want a stranger to take and publish without asking. Then articulate the general principle your discomfort points to. The empathy this builds is the most reliable ethical instrument you own.

Part F — Settings & Disclosure Drills

Exercise 32.21 ⭐⭐ — Write the disclosure. For three of your own edited images, write the exact disclosure line you would attach if presenting them as honest objects (e.g., "Composite of two frames," "Skin retouched; bone structure unaltered," "Color graded; no content added or removed"). Practice making disclosure specific rather than vague.

Exercise 32.22 ⭐⭐ — Editorial vs. commercial sort. Given ten described uses of a portrait (portfolio, news article, gallery print sold for money, antidepressant ad, your Instagram, a textbook, product packaging, a charity's fundraising poster, a band's album cover, a politician's campaign flyer), sort each into needs a model release or generally does not, and flag the two or three genuinely contested middle cases. Explain the contested ones.

Exercise 32.23 ⭐⭐⭐ — Caption it three ways. Take one consented portrait of a real person and write three captions: one extractive (a label that uses them as a symbol), one neutral, and one dignified (their name, their words if offered). Reflect on how completely the caption changes the image's representation without changing a pixel.

Part G — Build your code (the chapter's spine)

Exercise 32.24 ⭐⭐ — Draft your code of ethics. Using Figure 32.5's skeleton, write your one-page personal code of ethics across all six headings (consent, privacy, truth, dignity, culture, after-the-shutter). Make it livable — state your real exceptions. Date it and set a review date.

Exercise 32.25 ⭐⭐⭐ — Pressure-test your code. Take three of the hard cases from Part C and run them through the code you just wrote. Does your code actually decide them? Where it goes silent or gives an answer you do not believe, revise the code. A code that survives contact with hard cases is the only kind worth keeping.

Part H — Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

Exercise 32.26 ⭐⭐ — Street ethics in practice (Ch.17 + 32). Make a small street take (10–15 frames) at your intersection using zone focusing for speed (Ch.17, §17.2), then edit it down to 3 keepers — and for each keeper, justify it against both the critique vocabulary (Ch.31) and this chapter's fairness test. An image must pass craft and conscience to make the cut.

Exercise 32.27 ⭐⭐ — The honest retouch (Ch.29 + 32). Take one portrait and retouch it ethically (Ch.29): heal a temporary blemish, gently dodge and burn, but do not reshape who the person is. Then write the one-line disclosure (§32.3) and one sentence on exactly where you drew the enhancement/deception line and why.

Exercise 32.28 ⭐⭐⭐ — Light, dignity, and the environmental portrait (Ch.5 + 13 + 32). Make an environmental portrait of someone at work, with consent, that uses light (Ch.5) and the subject's environment (Ch.13) to represent them with dignity. The light must reveal them honestly (no caricaturing hard shadows, no flattering lie), the frame must give them agency, and the caption must be theirs. Keep one; it is a candidate for your Portfolio.

Exercise 32.29 ⭐⭐⭐ — The full audit (Ch.30 + 31 + 32). Using your organized catalog (Ch.30) and your critique skills (Ch.31), run the complete Portfolio ethics audit described in the Portfolio Checkpoint across your whole body of work. Produce the written reflection: what you found, what you changed (removed/anonymized/consented/disclosed/annotated), and the one principle you most want to carry forward.

Part I — Annotate & Defend (the curator's skill)

These build the exact skill the Portfolio Checkpoint demands: judging real images against the frameworks and writing down your reasoning. Editors and curators increasingly ask "how was this made, and was it made responsibly?" — practice answering.

Exercise 32.30 ⭐⭐ — The contract label. Take ten images from your own catalog (a mix of genres) and label each with the documentary contract it falls under (Figure 32.3) and the single edit that would break that contract. The drill is to feel how the same edit (a cloned object, a swapped sky) is fine under one label and a violation under another — the "promises, not pixels" idea made into a sorting task.

Exercise 32.31 ⭐⭐⭐ — Write the annotation a curator would want. Pick the three most ethically interesting images in your portfolio and write, for each, a short honest annotation: who is in it, what consent you had, what (if anything) you altered and whether it's disclosed, and one sentence on why you're comfortable showing it. If you can't write a comfortable annotation, that image is a candidate for removal or repair — which is exactly the Portfolio Checkpoint's point. Keep these annotations; they are the spine of your audit.

Exercise 32.32 ⭐⭐ — The benefit-question ledger. For five images of people in your portfolio, answer the benefit question in writing: who benefited from this image (you, the subject, the viewer, the public), and who bore the risk? Be honest when the answer is "I benefited, they bore the risk." That pattern is the signature of extraction, and naming it is the first step to changing it.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 32.33 ⭐⭐⭐ — A week of consent. For seven days, photograph people only with their informed consent — no stolen candids at all. Notice what it does to your shooting: which images you lose, which you gain, how strangers respond, how it changes the work and you. Each day, log one sentence on the hardest moment and how you handled it. At week's end, lay out the take and write whether you could — and whether you want to — make this a permanent part of your practice. Then write the harder companion question: if you don't want to make it permanent, what exactly are you unwilling to give up, and can you defend it? There is no wrong answer; the self-knowledge is the prize.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." For the hard cases especially, reason it through and write your ruling before you read the model — in ethics, as in photography, the attempt is the lesson, and your reasoning matters more than matching ours.