[Leica] Pictures, PJ, and art

[dorysrus at mindspring.com (Don Dory)]

I think that we are trying to fit "photography" into a straight jacket.
In photojournalism, changing elements, adding details, taking details
away, and even extreme burning will get you in serious trouble.  But
when we talk about photography as art, then pretty much anything goes:
the line between what is real and what is the imagination of the artist
goes away.

For snapshots, I think that less manipulation is better as we all want
to remember the way it really was.  Unless of course you are a fifty
something with a little vanity, in which a little healing brush and a
little Gaussian blur is a good thing. :)

Pretty much everything else falls in between the extremes.  Unless the
photograph is represented as reality, I believe that the viewer should
take the image on the terms offered.

While at PMA I took a short course in retouching using PS.  What is
accepted practice to touch up an image was pretty amazing to me.  The
changes made with the liquefy tool were simply jaw dropping.

Don
dorysrus@mindspring.com