OK, a true to life story, with the names of the innocent protected.
Jimmy sends me a link to a photograph. It's a beautiful photograph of a lake scene. Jimmy knows where the photo was taken, goes to the same place and takes a photo. The two images look very different.
Jimmy asks the photographer, Joe, how he managed to get the photo. Joe proceeds to show him his original image and his digitally enhanced/manipulated image where he cloned out trees, added a tree to "frame" the scene in the foreground (from somewhere else), added some flowers along the path from a photo taken somewhere else, added a float with some canoes (from another photo taken somewhere else), cloned out some houses from the far shore, and added some misty hills from another photo. Joe did an excellent job, all the light and shadows match.
Jimmy wrote me and said, "but he cheated." That's not what that spot looks like at all.
OK, but I still don't agree. To continue playing devil's advocate. Say Joe was a painter instead of a photographer. Would he be cheating if he simlpy didn't paint in those houses he didn't want? Or tweaked the distant hills? This image was obviously intended as an art piece, so I still say anything goes & if he and his potential customers are happy, then all the better.
I'll use some of my own photography as an example. While much less extreme than the landscape example, I have a shoot of a dance concert I spent a bit of time retouching. The main focus? All those tape marks on the stage; I cloned them out for a nice, even, clean stange that does not distract from the dancers. Did I cheat? Maybe, maybe not, but the clients sure liked the images & that's all that matters.
Another example. A landscape shot I took of nice green rolling hills with happy California cows on it. Pretty, idlyllic scene--except for the #^&^% power line I could not get out of the frame & keep my composition. So I took the shot with the intent of cloning it out of the sky at the time I hit the shutter. My final image is what I saw in my mind's eye when I was there, even if if isn't the exact view from that spot.
In all the above cases I think it's a perfectly appropriate use of the tools at hand to achieve the image we were looking for. On the flip side, that now infamous smoke shot from Reuters is definitely an inappropriate use of the tools. It depends on the intended use of the image.
Seems that no one is resistant to the temptation to "tweak" their images. Check out tonight's news regarding an over-zealous CBS employee in this thread:
Eh, this is a non-story. Who is surprised that a "network promotional magazine photo" was altered? They weren't trying to pass this off as news. If they hadn't released the photo previously I don't think anyone would have noticed.
With no ego, no pun, all due respect, etc, I dare to say the following:
most of the people I've personally met who raised this sort of questions simply don't know how to use photo-retouching software properly.
I know: I myself was one of them just a few years ago.
Luckily, I got healed, not without a help from the friendly communities such as dgrin and old stf.
Ditto. Andy Williams and Shay Stephens were the first people to "convince" me (by example) that PP is OK... more than OK actually!
Comments
Well said!
I guess this is what it means to be an Amish photographer...
Wait a sec... I the camera even allowed??
OK, but I still don't agree. To continue playing devil's advocate. Say Joe was a painter instead of a photographer. Would he be cheating if he simlpy didn't paint in those houses he didn't want? Or tweaked the distant hills? This image was obviously intended as an art piece, so I still say anything goes & if he and his potential customers are happy, then all the better.
I'll use some of my own photography as an example. While much less extreme than the landscape example, I have a shoot of a dance concert I spent a bit of time retouching. The main focus? All those tape marks on the stage; I cloned them out for a nice, even, clean stange that does not distract from the dancers. Did I cheat? Maybe, maybe not, but the clients sure liked the images & that's all that matters.
Another example. A landscape shot I took of nice green rolling hills with happy California cows on it. Pretty, idlyllic scene--except for the #^&^% power line I could not get out of the frame & keep my composition. So I took the shot with the intent of cloning it out of the sky at the time I hit the shutter. My final image is what I saw in my mind's eye when I was there, even if if isn't the exact view from that spot.
In all the above cases I think it's a perfectly appropriate use of the tools at hand to achieve the image we were looking for. On the flip side, that now infamous smoke shot from Reuters is definitely an inappropriate use of the tools. It depends on the intended use of the image.
http://www.chrislaudermilkphoto.com/
Eh, this is a non-story. Who is surprised that a "network promotional magazine photo" was altered? They weren't trying to pass this off as news. If they hadn't released the photo previously I don't think anyone would have noticed.
jamie