To edit or not to edit

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Purists in photography say you should use what comes out of your camera just as it is and not edit anything. That’s crap. The film guys - Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, etc. - dodged and burned their way through the darkroom to the brilliant and beautiful images they are known for.

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Those photographers were honest about their darkroom procedures and never represented their work as being directly out of the camera without any special processing. Now days, the uninformed non-photographer will ask those of us who enjoy this medium “Did you Photoshop that?” Often, in their mind, any photograph that is not directly out of the camera, as it appeared right after you pushed the shutter button is a “cheat”. Let’s be clear here, I’m talking about what would be considered “fine art” photography, not journalistic or documentary photography, which is a different thing. If you are taking photos to document the effects of global warming on a coastline, for example, the only thing that should be done to a photo of that nature is to be sure you compose the shot as best you can and in the best lighting possible so you are actually representing accurately the idea you are trying to illustrate by showing empirical evidence.

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Moving on to those of us who enjoy making artful images out of our photographs, there is a range of editing we do depending on our own taste and the end results we want to achieve. Some people like to use various filters available in several photo editing software programs to give a photograph the appearance of a watercolor or oil painting, or they like to distort certain areas of an image, or perhaps they like to replace a dull sky with a lovely sky with fluffy clouds to enhance the image. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of these editing techniques if someone likes the image, and as long as you don’t misrepresent what you did. For example, if you used a watercolor filter, don’t call the resulting image a “watercolor painting”. That would be deceptive.


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I personally mostly gravitate toward realistic images, but I do edit for contrast and maybe for color saturation. I may also remove an ugly trash container or something of that nature, just to make the image more enjoyable. I have, however, also enjoyed “playing” with an image to see what I can do with it and sometimes I really enjoy the results.



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The photographs in this blog post were altered in Photoshop. You may like them, you many not like them, but I will always be honest about what I’ve done in general with an image and I will tell you if you ask. With me, there is no “secret sauce”.


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For more of my images, please visit:

mary-bedy.pixels.com



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