What Photo Gear

Is it a photograph, or is it digital art?

With the magic of Photoshop, we are able to manipulate our images in ways that are limited only by our imagination.

We can get rid of those skin blemishes in our portraits. We can totally erase that person who happened to walk into the frame just as we hit the shutter. We can transform a dull cloudy landscape to a stunning sunset image. The possibilities are almost endless.

But that also leads to a lot of questions from viewers. Was that full moon really there when you took that picture? Was the sky really that blue that day?

Some people dislike Photoshopped work, the argument is that this detracts from the “truth of photography”. There are purists who would even submit that any form of Photoshopped work is automatically digital art. I strongly disagree though. Photographers have been ‘manipulating’ photographs for years in an attempt to get the most out of their film. Photoshop is simply the darkroom of the digital age. Where before you spent hours tweaking everything in a darkroom until you come out with the perfect print – now photographers spend hours in from of their computers trying out different tecniques.

But I believe that Photoshop – just like all our other gear - is just a tool to help us improve our images. Yes, you should try to get the best possible photograph when you press that shutter, instead of settling for a mediocre exposure with the thought of improving it in Photoshop later. But I also believe that image manipulation software is an important, but not entirely essential, part of the photographic process. While it is certainly possible to produce stunning work without the help of Photoshop, it can also go a long way in making already impressive photographs even better. Even if it means just sharpening it up a bit, or just color correcting a bit.

Whether you use software to extensively change your photographs or just for simple tweaks, I don’t really care. All I’m after is the end product and your honesty. To me it is no different from my tripod, or my lenses, or my camera itself – it is simply a tool that helps us in saying what we want to say with our photographs. But, and this is the big BUT - do not ever use Photoshop to mislead others about your images. Do not lead others into thinking that the sunset was really that color, or that the full moon was really there that night if it wasn’t. If you changed the colors, erased something or cloned some pixels, then say so.

To me photography is always about invoking emotion. If an image manages to grab me and make me want to take everything in, then that’s really all that matters. But if I am led to believe that a photograph was taken as is and I later find out that it was in fact Photoshopped or staged – then that is another thing altogether.