Amy, there is this widely perpetuated misconception that image manipulation is somehow disingenuous and "false photography." There is no question that documentary, forensic and product photography must be true to life and cannot be manipulated.

Not only did Adams adjust his print process to reflect his ever evolving vision, in the case of Moonrise, he even took the only existing negative of that shot and partially reprocessed it to enhance contrast in some of the areas of the image.

At this point I usually say something like - those who express their disdain for post processing for whatever the reason are either ignorant, lazy, or have low standards for image quality. Or they shoot for newspapers. :)

Some of the best photographers I know personally do amazing reportage, and I am in constant awe of their skill and the results they get. It's a job I know I could never do. At least not as successfully as they can.

I think a competition of SOOC would have a lot of boring lifeless images with little impact - similar to the "before" version of Moonrise. It should be done with all of the picture controls set to neutral or minimal effect - no vivid saturation, extra sharpening, film modes, in camera HDR, Active D Lighting, etc etc etc - and with either daylight or 3200K white balance - - only then could it be considered somewhat fair.

This is an interesting suggestion. But it is technically almost impossible to do what you suggest by using digital cameras. That is because there are no "straight" photos when you shoot digital. Already when you shoot digital the cameras are set to PP the photos in jpeg and on many cameras those settings (colors, contrast, sharpness etc) can be and usually are fine tuned be each camera user. And if you try to bypass this by allowing only RAW files in the photo contest most of the files from newer cameras would be too big to send them in so then again you need to go to PP to convert the files to be able to send them in and then again you are not anymore using "straight" photos.

Here is a before PP and after PP version of an image that you might recognize. Other than the fact that the photographer did a great job of getting all of the tones recorded in order to manipulate it in post, does the SOOC image have any significant relevance? Would you consider the SOOC image one that you would regard as a work of art?

http://www.kevinshick.com/blog/2013/4/revisiting-hernandez-nm

A measure of the "completeness" of a photographer is one who "sees" the final result BEFORE snapping the shutter, uses his/her knowledge of the gear and media to set the camera correctly, then execute a masterful handling of the image to create a result that is true to the original vision.

If you cut out the post processing, then images might never reach their full potential.

With that being said, yes, I too have seen quite a few images that are overprocessed. It doesn't mean post processing is bad, it just means that the photographer over did things a bit. All digital cameras produce images require processing. Whether the photographer is content with the limited set of adjustments provided by the camera manufacturer in their menus, and scene settings, or he/she is skilled in extracting the "essence" of the original vision - will determine the quality, uniqueness, and impact of the result.