Wrong Photography Ethics?

[Chuck Alaimo]

My view is quite a simple one. If you look at National Geographic magazine you will see photographs beyond what we see on here. Yet,they were all taken in camera. If such can be taken in camera, why do you need a computer to make your images look better when they dont?

The thing about this statement --for the most part...nat geo shots are carefully planned voyages (sometimes multiple voyages) to epic locations ---- EPIC LOCATIONS!!!!!!!! (and yes they do post process things too)...  I live in Buffalo NY, and while there may be some nice spots to shoot... other than niagara falls is there truly anything epic here? --- nat geo Epic?  I do not have thousands of dollars in travel budget...and my wedding and portrait clients don't have thousands of dollars to spend to have their wedding at the top of Mt Everest, or the jungles of Brazil, or deep in greenlands glaciers, or off in the magical hobbit land that is new Zealand...we aren't going to the tops of the Andes, not hiking through Cambodia, no sleek desert dunes of Tatooine (LOL...Tunisia), no engagement shoot at the great wall of China, no South African Diamond Mine, and not in a tribal village in New Guinea......I could go on and on but you get the point I hope.  Nat Geo goes to EPIC places!!!!! They also have the budget to wait out the weather if need be.  They also have the budget to go back if they wait 2 weeks and the weather doesn't work out.  They have their own submarines for crying out loud, subs, helicopters, planes, large boats....so yeah, Nat Geo can hold to a more natural approach...because they are generally going places that are so epic they don't need much manipulation.  Most of us don't have EPIC locations at pur doorstep, most of us are engaged in the art of pulling the beauty out of and or creating magic from a mundane scene.  LOL...  in the portrait/wedding world, it's like wondering why you handle a sports illustrated swimsuit model with full wardrobe and makeup crew differently than a plus sized bride at a budget wedding....

Just a note, Cambodia's countryside is not epic. Ive lived here three years and have yet to find those breathtaking views. Im actually out in the provinces now. It's 5 in the morning herre and me and my friend are going out in a while to capture the sunrise. Will see what I get. Vietnam is epic.

But I agree on your point.

Ok...so as you can see there...never been to cambodia to know it's not epic...lol...

[Hobby Shooter]

Haha, good one, I forget which movie that is from...Monty Python's "meaning of life" I assume?

So, the meaning of life...is Jackie Robinson?  Ok

Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

[Chuck Alaimo]

lol...sorry...but lucky looked lonely in the one edit.. I think he's happier now with his family...LOL

[Hobby Shooter]

My view is quite a simple one. If you look at National Geographic magazine you will see photographs beyond what we see on here. Yet,they were all taken in camera. If such can be taken in camera, why do you need a computer to make your images look better when they dont?

The thing about this statement --for the most part...nat geo shots are carefully planned voyages (sometimes multiple voyages) to epic locations ---- EPIC LOCATIONS!!!!!!!! (and yes they do post process things too)...  I live in Buffalo NY, and while there may be some nice spots to shoot... other than niagara falls is there truly anything epic here? --- nat geo Epic?  I do not have thousands of dollars in travel budget...and my wedding and portrait clients don't have thousands of dollars to spend to have their wedding at the top of Mt Everest, or the jungles of Brazil, or deep in greenlands glaciers, or off in the magical hobbit land that is new Zealand...we aren't going to the tops of the Andes, not hiking through Cambodia, no sleek desert dunes of Tatooine (LOL...Tunisia), no engagement shoot at the great wall of China, no South African Diamond Mine, and not in a tribal village in New Guinea......I could go on and on but you get the point I hope.  Nat Geo goes to EPIC places!!!!! They also have the budget to wait out the weather if need be.  They also have the budget to go back if they wait 2 weeks and the weather doesn't work out.  They have their own submarines for crying out loud, subs, helicopters, planes, large boats....so yeah, Nat Geo can hold to a more natural approach...because they are generally going places that are so epic they don't need much manipulation.  Most of us don't have EPIC locations at pur doorstep, most of us are engaged in the art of pulling the beauty out of and or creating magic from a mundane scene.  LOL...  in the portrait/wedding world, it's like wondering why you handle a sports illustrated swimsuit model with full wardrobe and makeup crew differently than a plus sized bride at a budget wedding....

Just a note, Cambodia's countryside is not epic. Ive lived here three years and have yet to find those breathtaking views. Im actually out in the provinces now. It's 5 in the morning herre and me and my friend are going out in a while to capture the sunrise. Will see what I get. Vietnam is epic.

But I agree on your point.

Ok...so as you can see there...never been to cambodia to know it's not epic...lol...

Well now you know 

[TeenTog]

[quote I have made changes but not altered nature][/quote]

Although last time I checked changing the sky is altering nature, If that's what you mean......

[GMCPhotographics]

My view is quite a simple one. If you look at National Geographic magazine you will see photographs beyond what we see on here. Yet,they were all taken in camera. If such can be taken in camera, why do you need a computer to make your images look better when they dont?

The thing about this statement --for the most part...nat geo shots are carefully planned voyages (sometimes multiple voyages) to epic locations ---- EPIC LOCATIONS!!!!!!!! (and yes they do post process things too)...  I live in Buffalo NY, and while there may be some nice spots to shoot... other than niagara falls is there truly anything epic here? --- nat geo Epic?  I do not have thousands of dollars in travel budget...and my wedding and portrait clients don't have thousands of dollars to spend to have their wedding at the top of Mt Everest, or the jungles of Brazil, or deep in greenlands glaciers, or off in the magical hobbit land that is new Zealand...we aren't going to the tops of the Andes, not hiking through Cambodia, no sleek desert dunes of Tatooine (LOL...Tunisia), no engagement shoot at the great wall of China, no South African Diamond Mine, and not in a tribal village in New Guinea......I could go on and on but you get the point I hope.  Nat Geo goes to EPIC places!!!!! They also have the budget to wait out the weather if need be.  They also have the budget to go back if they wait 2 weeks and the weather doesn't work out.  They have their own submarines for crying out loud, subs, helicopters, planes, large boats....so yeah, Nat Geo can hold to a more natural approach...because they are generally going places that are so epic they don't need much manipulation.  Most of us don't have EPIC locations at pur doorstep, most of us are engaged in the art of pulling the beauty out of and or creating magic from a mundane scene.  LOL...  in the portrait/wedding world, it's like wondering why you handle a sports illustrated swimsuit model with full wardrobe and makeup crew differently than a plus sized bride at a budget wedding....

Just a note, Cambodia's countryside is not epic. Ive lived here three years and have yet to find those breathtaking views. Im actually out in the provinces now. It's 5 in the morning herre and me and my friend are going out in a while to capture the sunrise. Will see what I get. Vietnam is epic.

But I agree on your point.

Steve McCurry's Afgan Girl (the most famous portrait / Nat Geo shot ever) was originally shot in a landscape orientation. It was an over the shoulder shot which he gave no thought to. When his editor saw it he "converted" it to  portrait by re-shooting the difference using a model and a room set up....and merged the two together. Most of his images are tweeked in some way (vignetting, dodge burn etc) by his editor. So don't think that all Nat Geo shots are a perfect in cam shots....some are quite convoluted and anything goes to get the shot.
Even the late great Ansel Adams used to do extensive post production to each photograph. So I don't see what the problem is here. How can we ask about purity and subject integrity where we are photographing a 2D representation of a 3D world. It's all representation of some sorts.

[AprilForever]

My view is quite a simple one. If you look at National Geographic magazine you will see photographs beyond what we see on here. Yet,they were all taken in camera. If such can be taken in camera, why do you need a computer to make your images look better when they dont?

The thing about this statement --for the most part...nat geo shots are carefully planned voyages (sometimes multiple voyages) to epic locations ---- EPIC LOCATIONS!!!!!!!! (and yes they do post process things too)...  I live in Buffalo NY, and while there may be some nice spots to shoot... other than niagara falls is there truly anything epic here? --- nat geo Epic?  I do not have thousands of dollars in travel budget...and my wedding and portrait clients don't have thousands of dollars to spend to have their wedding at the top of Mt Everest, or the jungles of Brazil, or deep in greenlands glaciers, or off in the magical hobbit land that is new Zealand...we aren't going to the tops of the Andes, not hiking through Cambodia, no sleek desert dunes of Tatooine (LOL...Tunisia), no engagement shoot at the great wall of China, no South African Diamond Mine, and not in a tribal village in New Guinea......I could go on and on but you get the point I hope.  Nat Geo goes to EPIC places!!!!! They also have the budget to wait out the weather if need be.  They also have the budget to go back if they wait 2 weeks and the weather doesn't work out.  They have their own submarines for crying out loud, subs, helicopters, planes, large boats....so yeah, Nat Geo can hold to a more natural approach...because they are generally going places that are so epic they don't need much manipulation.  Most of us don't have EPIC locations at pur doorstep, most of us are engaged in the art of pulling the beauty out of and or creating magic from a mundane scene.  LOL...  in the portrait/wedding world, it's like wondering why you handle a sports illustrated swimsuit model with full wardrobe and makeup crew differently than a plus sized bride at a budget wedding....

Just a note, Cambodia's countryside is not epic. Ive lived here three years and have yet to find those breathtaking views. Im actually out in the provinces now. It's 5 in the morning herre and me and my friend are going out in a while to capture the sunrise. Will see what I get. Vietnam is epic.

But I agree on your point.

Steve McCurry's Afgan Girl (the most famous portrait / Nat Geo shot ever) was originally shot in a landscape orientation. It was an over the shoulder shot which he gave no thought to. When his editor saw it he "converted" it to  portrait by re-shooting the difference using a model and a room set up....and merged the two together. Most of his images are tweeked in some way (vignetting, dodge burn etc) by his editor. So don't think that all Nat Geo shots are a perfect in cam shots....some are quite convoluted and anything goes to get the shot.
Even the late great Ansel Adams used to do extensive post production to each photograph. So I don't see what the problem is here. How can we ask about purity and subject integrity where we are photographing a 2D representation of a 3D world. It's all representation of some sorts.

Even the choice of focal length and aperture are distortions of nature. You never "in real life" actually see what a 600mm lens sees, nor what a 10mm lens would see. The eye cannot replicate f22, nor can it replicate f1.0. Thus, photography reality is not as black and white a line as people would often indicate. We make edits long before photoshop.

[dstppy]

Okay, call it people: this is the post that ends the discussion.

If you're not using a prime, you're faking photography.

There. I said it. Zooms are flat-out cheating, and have no place in the art.

 

[J.R.]

Cause of Death ... "elegant forensic evidence that, although the camera cannot lie, photographs tell different truths" - John Hilliard

"John Hilliard’s ‘Cause of Death’ provides a useful textbook example of the ways the meaning of a single image can be altered by its cropping and caption. This piece of work demonstrates how meaning in the photograph is achieved by selecting the appropriate information. From a single negative, Hilliard has selected and titled four possible ‘causes of death’ that might explain the situation of a body shown lying on a beach. These ‘explanations’ have been captioned: crushed, drowned, fell, burned and gain their effect purely through the way Hilliard has decided to present the facts. The spatial relationship between each fragment and its frame indicates that each image has been cropped from a larger image, which (if ever shown in its entirety) would prove to be ambiguous. Upon viewing Hilliard’s work, we can not only discover that we may have been deceived by the four possible interpretations, but the way that they have been displayed provides us with the means to find out exactly how we might have been misled."

  (Copied from a book)


Every photograph is a lie and basically a representation of how the photographer wants to depict a scene. Does it really matter that the clouds have been photo-shopped?

Photography is an art form and with the continuous improvement in tech, the only ethics you have in this discipline are those which you choose for yourself.

[RGF]

I found the sky boring and added clouds to make it more interesting.

Do you think this is cheating? I really want to know.

Am very confused. I have made changes but not altered nature. Have I done something wrong?

Thx

After all the comments what have you decided?  Are you a sinner  or a saint ?

[AcutancePhotography]

Do you think this is cheating? I really want to know.

Am very confused. I have made changes but not altered nature. Have I done something wrong?

Thx

The OP used the terms "cheating" and "wrong".  Those concepts only apply when applied against a set of rules/regulations/standards/laws.  None of which exist universally in photography.

Now, a specific competition, website, organization... may have their own rules and they can be as restrictive or as liberal as they choose.  You can only cheat/do something wrong when you try to break these rules.

Absent of any such rules or standards you are incapable of cheating or doing something wrong.  People may disagree or dislike what you choose to do to that photograph and that's ok. They have a right to their opinion.

You remember what they say about the worth of an opinion -- when you put in your two cents, people will only give you a penny for your thoughts. 

However, this topic raises an interesting and perhaps unanswerable question:  At what point does an image cease being a photograph and become graphic art?

Identifying the extremes is pretty easy.  We can all identify a picture taken with a camera with basic processing as a "photograph".  We can all identify graphic art from many examples on the Internets Tubes of some pretty wild stuff.  But where is the dividing line?  At what point, when I am dickin (technical term) with my image in PS/LR do I cross the line from having a photograph and start creating graphic art?

Well, there is no line, or more accurately, there is no universally accepted line between photographs and graphic art. Everyone has their own internal definition of the difference between photography and graphic art. Even if people seem in agreement, it is then only a collective opinion not a standard.

So the point of my ramblings is that you were not cheating nor doing something wrong unless you were submitting this image to some entity that has some sort of rules.  Of course that opens up a can o worms about implied or assumed standards, but we all know what happens when you assume something.