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.
Continue reading “Honesty in Photography”
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