To edit or not to edit, that is the question. Well, maybe not the only question, but it is a fair question to ask.
Unlike most media, photography is perceived as being a record of reality, and as such, should not be messed with. Many photographers believe their images are untouchable and editing somehow removes the immediacy and reality of the image. And I get that. The reason I love photography is because I feel I'm somehow capturing reality on film... or on a digital media card, as the case may be! Traditionally, photography has been very different from the other arts. A painter, for instance, can decide to ignore an object if it doesn't fit the composition or the idea they are trying to convey. Sculptors create from a block of material, many times without anything to go by. Michelangelo is credited with saying: "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." I wish I had great quotes like that! A photographer, at least from the days of film, was limited by what they saw and could capture on film. They had some options as to color bias or even removing color altogether by shooting in black and white, but the scene itself was what it was. Burning and dodging areas was acceptable since it was difficult to record the great contrast ranges of the natural environment, but it was a herculean task to remove a distracting branch or fill in a blank space in the sky with a cloud. When artists like Ansel Adams began created majestic views of the landscape, seemingly pristine and unspoiled, the idea of editing became more and more frowned upon. It just wasn't done. With the advent of digital imaging, it became possible to edit to an extraordinary degree. Movies became special effects wonders (sometimes to the detriment of the story line); photographs could be manipulated to show long dead celebrities in contemporary settings (sometimes to the detriment of history); objects were removed or replaced, lighting effects changed, colors manipulated to show sunsets where there had been none. In many ways, editing is seen as something done for drama but not for "real" images, as it makes them more and more disconnected from the reality associated with the taking of a photograph. So the question is one of degree -- It isn't if we should edit, but how much editing is acceptable. It boils down to understanding what are we doing when we edit an image. For various technical reasons, digital images need sharpening and color balancing. Most would accept this as needed editing since the technology requires it to faithfully record a scene. But what of specific types of photography? What editing is acceptable in these instances? In Part 2, I try to answer this question!
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