Quote Originally Posted by Greg McCary
I agree totaly with you on this Marc. Trying to pass off a fake rainbow as the real thing is wrong. A lie is a lie. But there has been times that I have replaced skies or removed items from my pictures without stating so to see if my PS skills were good enough to pull it off. I have seen some pictures here a PR that are times that I thought were almost to amazing to be true, but the photographer insists that it is real. I would never PS a piece of work and claim it as he real thing if it was not, no matter how good at PS I get.
Everyone has their definition of what photography is. or what it should be. I feel Trog makes valid points, adding elements to an image and then trying to pass them off as the real thing is just wrong.
Greg
So where do you draw the line?

Does a double exposure count? The fact that you have a landscape without moon and then swap lens to change the size of the moon and retake the shot? What is the difference between photoshoping a moon in, because digital camera's don't tend to have double exposure features because its expected to do this in post processing.

Colouring prints which we used to do with chemicals in days gone by, is this verboten?

Where is this imaginary locus and how can you possibly define it?

It is up to the individual photographer to define when creating the final concept in the mind's eye. You don't ask an artist how the final painting or sculpture was arrived at. It could have been drawn using a projector to give the outline... All that is considered important in this instance is the final outcome, not the steps used to arrive there.

Photojournalism, as trog seems to define pure photography, is another form of photography, which I compare to an Archaeologist who draws sketches of where objects were found on a dig or a product sketch used to create a mould... This has to be accurate to what is viewed not what an artist has in mind. However, even in this instance, the photographer will not capture what is not required in the picture.

They are both valid process of the photographers toolkit and I am sure that we all use or don't use the tools as we see fit to get the final intention we have in mind.

As a photographer, both film and digital, will spend time composing in the viewfinder what I have in mind before pressing the button which is the start of the process. I will always think of how the picture will look after I have developed the film, either film or digital and look at the techniques available to me to get the intended photograph.

Roger