Photographer Jim Loc: Rio Vista, CA

I have heard this suggestion before, but can not accept it. If I present an image, (journalistic or legal venues excluded), even one that has been highly manipulated, I have no obligation whatsoever to also provide you with some physical notification on the print as to the existence or extent of that manipulation. As the creator of the image my concern is not whether or not you are coming to the viewing with a preconceived assumption or not. My only concern is do you like the image or not.

Now obviously, if you ask me upon viewing if I manipulated the image, I do have an ethical obligation to be truthful and not lie about it, but beyond that, I do not have any moral or ethical requirement to front load you about my use or non-use of PP.

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

Of course I'm accepting of your work. There's no "right" or "wrong" here. Photography is a craft AND an art. It's true of many related subjects. A filmaker may seek to represent reality as best they can in making a documentary, while another filmaker may be creating an alternative "Reality" when producing a SCI-FI movie ( or really any other fictional film.) Neither is "better" Just different ways of using a technology to create an end product.

A photographer is a pictorial artist that starts with light as the source medium, It's the image that they want to achieve, When done,all that matters is wether they are satisfied with the image!

James Slick Loc: Pittsburgh,PA

Advertising always tries to present a thing as better than reality, deliberately concealing a defect is as old as advertising photography. "beauty aid" and "fashion" photography are always altered to hide flaws in the subject. Car Advertising photos are even edited to have the wheels (or hubcaps) upright! Advertising is always some form of manipulation. However, if the photo is intended to document an item in it's true form (like on a spec sheet), then deception is wrong.

Documenting a thing and dramatically presenting it are different forms. Dramatically presenting something can be "art", Documenting it should be "craft".

Hank Fanelli Loc: Denver

A photograph records an instant in time that will never occur again

Dennis Duffy

My father is 71, and has a lifetime of photographs. Over the last couple years he has created a database for each printed picture he has in his albums. He also sent off his negatives to be converted to digital files and backed them up onto archival DVD's and labeled the cases. 99% of his photography work is of the family, which will be appreciated for generations to come. He has also helped me do similar work with my own photography.

papakatz45 Loc: South Florida-West Palm Beach

Another RAW snob. Shooting JPEG SOOC does not mean I have a lack of artistic skills.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

You may want to read what I actually wrote. I didn’t say ALL SOOC shooters are snapshot shooters. That would be a very foolish statement to make. Just like the claim that as long as I shoot raw, I’m artistic.

Would you mind, from now on, to READ what someone’s post actually says, so that you don’t raise your own blood pressure and call people names?

Did you miss the part where I wrote that I only care about the end product? I could care less if it was jpeg that was edited, or a raw unedited.

What I had actually said, was that you couldn’t comprehend, was that those members, who had complained were snapshot shooters. I always check out their work and in every case, it was the same. I don’t think that they could take a great photo if their life depended on it.

Hope this post cleared things up for you.

Now I’m going to see what you produce.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

So I found 2 photos from you. The flower shot has blown highlights and it is a stacked photo.

The other picture is a B&W photo.

So neither one is SOOC Jpeg.

Out of respect, I will not comment on the content.

btbg

It's not a completely different universe. The value of photos of the civil war, or world war I, or WWII, etc. is that they show a portion of what happened and help us reconstruct the events of the day even though we were never there.

Some of those photos were taken by journalists, but some weren't. Family albums are certainly not journalism, but they still document life as it was for that family. That has value in history.

I have no problem with manipulated photos. I do however, have a huge problem when those photos are presented as reality. The problem that we currently have isn't whether or not it's ok to manipulate an image to express an alternate reality, or the photographers vision. It's that many fail to correctly identify those images as art rather than just photography, and consequently mislead people.

If everyone were honest about what they did, and also correctly labeled their art, so future generations knew what it was then anything goes. Unfortunately some have blurred the lines so that even legitimate photojournalism becomes suspect. We no longer believe what we see because some have deliberately blurred that line. That's a problem.

By the way as a photojournalist, I go out of my way to take the best art that I can, and I am happy to manipulate what I do on my own time. It's a lot of fun. But I make sure that the two are kept separate and that there is no chance that anyone would mistake the altered images as reality.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

Well, I’m not sure of your post, but if I were to take a picture of an accident, there would be no reason to manipulate the photo and I’d never want to either. So for me, that is a different universe. Everything else is up for grabs.

CatMarley Loc: North Carolina

This is, in fact, a serious problem. I breed dogs, and the national club puts out educational information for AKC dog judges. The group that developed this "educational" material put in highly photoshopped images to instruct the judges on what the anatomy of the dog should look like. Now I am also a physician and have degrees in zoology and these images do not represent anything that could actually survive on this planet. The altered anatomy they depict could never chew it's food nor walk. It is presented as reality, and judges are supposed to evaluate living animals on this basis. Computer processing has blurred the lines between truth and unreality, and to the detriment of this breed of dogs.