French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (Wikipedia) was a purist. He claimed that he didn’t even crop any of his photos, let alone indulge in the darkroom magic of dodging and burning. Had airbrushing been available to HCB, I very much doubt he would have done much more than laugh at it.
In this digital age, it’s difficult to be such a purist. Yet there must be some limits, some standard.
How much digital manipulation can you do before it’s no longer a “true” image?
Wandering around Flickr, I’ve noticed a preponderance of heavily manipulated images — Photoshopped to an inch of the digital existence. The results are striking, but somehow false. I get the feeling that I’m looking at an advertisement of some sort.
Examples include:
I’m not discounting the quality of the composition, nor the impact of image, but it just seems to be a little too much.
When I do digital manipulation (and I rarely use Photoshop for that anymore), my goal is simply to make the image look as it did when I took the picture.