Honesty in Photography

I just read a great email from Brian Peterson, founder of The Perfect Picture School of Photography.  He ran an unscientific opinion pole on whether photographers felt it was OK to dramatically alter photographs in Photoshop.  Now, by ‘dramatically alter,’ Brian means to add major elements to an image that were not present in the original scene or make other major changes that alter the content of the image.

He has a provocative blog post with the title that starts, “Every photograph is a ‘lie,…’,  In it he raises the excellent point that even those photographs that aren’t altered in Photoshop are still an abstraction of reality and thus a ‘lie.’  I recommend you read it.

What were the results of his opinion pole?  Brian reports that 41% of photographers felt that it is OK to dramatically alter images in Photoshop and NOT tell anyone unless asked.  And if asked, some would say, “It’s none of your business.”  The reason photographers felt this way boiled down to two words – Artistic License.

I have my own thoughts on “artistic license” and would like to share them with you.

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Canon 1Ds Mark III Upcoming Shoot

Well, no shooting with the new toy yesterday or today.  As I haven’t given up my day job yet it’s necessary to get some consulting hours in to bring home the bacon.  Besides, the client is happier when I pay some attention to them.  However, the RRS L bracket came today.  So I’ll be able to attach the camera to the tripod without having to use the long lens – always a good thing to be able to do.

But this weekend is going to be very exciting.  First of all, it’s the 1st Annual Joshua Tree Gathering, open to anyone who owns a camera and isn’t afraid to use it.  See the post.  But I’m going to attempt a series of sunrise shots from first light to the sun fully up.  The thing that makes this interesting is I’m going to attempt to do this as  360 degree panorama.  I hope I don’t have to add HDR to the mix.  Arg!

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2008 Joshua Tree Gathering

The first annual Joshua Tree Gathering is scheduled for January 18th through January 20th in Joshua Tree National Park.  We welcome photographers of all levels of ability.  If you’re interested, leave me a comment to this post.

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Welcome Roger Nordstrom

My brother, Roger, just launched his own blog yesterday.  I added his site to the Glogroll and will be adding an RSS feed.  I encourage you to check it out at RogerNordstromPhoto.blogspot.com.  He also has a very nice website with some of his amazing work.  You’ll want to check that out also at RogerNordstromPhoto.com.  You’ll love his work.

 Welcome Roger.

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