Re: Am I Cheating
Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 5:41 pm
chestersgallery wrote:Having come into the digital SLR's scene very late I often wonder how much editing is fair or unfair to the viewer. With my old film SLR I had no darkroom and the pictures came back from the developers as taken. In other words the skill was in the shoot.( And still is to a point) Now with the ability to shoot in raw and alter all manor of things afterwards I often wonder " What exactly is a reasonable amount of editing". I know its down to individual opinion but what are the individual opinion of PBasers on this subject.
For example in your opinion
Is cropping OK ?
Is altering levels OK?
Is saturation and digital Burning OK?
Should it be stated on PBase what level of editing took place? ( I know some of us do anyway )
In short. Are we cheating the viewer? ( assuming of course the viewer cares)
Hope this kicks off some interesting response
Chester,
You said you shot film and didn't do your own darkroom work and that photos came back from the developer as taken. What you may not realize is that the developer did the work you'd now do in software. If you had your photos done in a fairly good lab a person did the work to make exposure, saturation and the like come out as well as possible, so those could hardly be said to have come back just how the camera did them. And if they were just run through a machine, those machines usually do some adjustments too. So, you sent them in, and they came back done. But more was going on behind the scenes than meets the eye.
It's all about honesty. Photography is considered an art form (except in photojournalism or forensics and the like) so there really are no bounds. I don't feel it's necessary to up front state what you did to make the finished work, but if someone asks be honest about it. Don't say "It's just how it came from the camera" if it isn't. So to answer your questions directly, no we aren't cheating the viewer. Altering levels is fine, cropping is fine, cloning out dust spots or wires is fine, ect.