Post your photographs

If I am the one who edits it then it is still my shot, just that I used my artistic license to make it how I wanted it to be. Isn't that the purpose of photography, to see something and capture it? If it doesn't turn out how I like it all I do is edit it such that it looks like what I wanted in the first place.

errr well you see, obviously cameras dont turn night into day, but different settings can make a picture look alot of different ways, specially if its a good camera, so i dont see how is that different to photoshopping, except if you edit out a part of the picture or make any big change on it. photoshop only edits the quality, if the pic is bad it cant really do much for it

I must confess I'm with Panama and Goose here. For a long time now I have been hearing my dad complain that photography isn't what it used to be. Every time he likes a picture I took, he never fails to comment on how I have surely enhanced it somehow. And I haven't. To me a good photograph is raw and whatever is good about it must be natural.

Otherwise - what's the point? Go take a picture of anything and turn it into whatever you like. Kill the art.

Even professional photographers edit their pictures. And not just ones who use digital. You can manipulate just as much in a photo lab when you process film. If you think that every professional picture is the original photo, you're quite mistaken. You can dodge and burn when developing, correct an exposure that is too light or too dark, etc.... We just accept that most professional photographers do well without manipulating their prints, but that is very untrue. To me it's no different than any other artist. It's still that persons creation, regardless of how they created the final image.

It's one thing to make a piture lighter somehow and other thing change the colour of water or add stuff into it, or take it from it.


Yes, we all know about airbrushing, but that doesn't really make it alright.

Honestly, I don't see Cartier Bresson using Photoshop (excuse the anachronism) to create the reflection in this wonderful picture:


He simply took shot after shot after shot. I once watched an interview with him when he said the main defining traits of a photographer were patience and serendipity/luck. He never mentioned skills at the lab.

Some situations though it is not possible for a camera to capture exactly what you want. If I look at my photo's after I've taken them I'll see that they aren't quite bright enough or whatever and then edit them, not because I didn't do my best to capture the shot then and there, but because the camera is limited in what it can do. Not everyone can afford the highest quality camera.

Photography is not just the art of capturing an image, but also the art of displaying a captured image in the best possible way. In professional photography there has always been some form of processing. Most of the images you'll ever see that were shot by a professional are processed in some way or another. Whether the photograph was captured on film or on a (digital) sensor, enhancing images has always been part of photography.

The thing with digital photography is that everybody seems to 'know' things about processing images and everyone has the means to enhance images. Which results in many terribly overdone pics. You'd better not process images, unless you know exactly what you're doing. But if you know what you're doing an image can end up so much better after photoshopping or whatever method you use.

I'm not talking about adding things to an image that weren't there to begin with. But I've taken a lot of pictures where my camera just didn't capture the photo the same way I saw it. Camera's are much more limited in what they see than the human eye can be. Even the best of them. To me, using Photoshop to make the sky bluer (or the water!) isn't wrong or even misleading. It's no different than if I used a filter on my lense as I took the picture to gain the same effect. Like Sara said, if you do it right, editing an image after can make it a lot better. I'm talking things like enhancing color, or fixing an expsure that didn't come out right...not adding in an entire reflection.

the way i see it theres a difference between manipulation before taking the shot and manipulation afterwards.

in general how would a person who's looking at the photograph know how much of it is 'real' and how much is fake? and if you went into a photography competiton surely youd get disqualified if you photoshopped all your images. and if you have to change colours and stuff and edited your photos to such an extent as some you do then it isnt 'photography' and those arent your photos. its basically a piss take.

I am with the anti photoshopper crowd. Not that I think it is a bad thing, but it isn't what I'd ever look for in a picture and it would take away all the items I admire in a 'real' photograph. Hopefully, there is a market and/or appreciation crowd for photoshopped pictures, surely it takes some talent and like Neil said - he can put together a picture that looks exactly as he envisioned it. That is a form of art.

Though, not what I'd call photographic art. The pic Keeper posted is an excellent example. It captures something that can never be replicated or thought of via photoshopping - even the photographer might not have known what he/she was after until they saw the shot.

It is often stated that Ansel Adams was not a extraoridnarily good photographer and the equipment is not the most important part - it's seeing fraction of a whole picture and seeing it's value as a photograph. Surely a forest full of trees isn't all that exciting, until you narrow it down to a few trees and devoid it of color, add depth and focus on negative space - then you have a masterpiece that could have been taken by anyone with any camera. It just so happens that 'anyone' wouldn't have had the vision to snap the picture in that particular angle...