Tampering with Nature

I think I've read this thread 27 times before in the last 3 years. The horse is dead, y'all. Quit flogging him.

I know this is an old question but from time to time a thread like this shows this is a live question.

To me, as others have said, the first and only question is being true and honest with your own previsualization. Ansel Adams was effectively a master of tweaking the b&w labo but his images were absoutly coherent with his vision. Talking about the pre-PS era, you can think about Peter Turner, Eliot Porter, and other color masters, or you can think about b&w work of Jerry Uelsmann.

I ask you to see my landscape gallery. There is some images near untouched in Photoshop but they have been really changed in the taking, say colour reciprocity change, long exposure blurring water, etc. On the other side, some images are very true to the thing but they were so unreal that I was forced to change it on PS and desaturate it(the rocks with the blue colour)

I think, as I have said before the key is being true to yourself and your image previsualization. If you simply tweak image after image on PS and there is no coherent vision on it, you lose all power you could have got by the technique. So, develop your vision and be faithful to it. Use what you want and do what you need to get the images on your head going out. This is my point.<div></div>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1103681&size=lg">"Nature"</a> - or not? Certainly somebody tampered with it :)

my passion is nature photography,let it be animals,insects or stills.but i do get rather worked up because of so-called winner nature photo,s that starts to show up in photo compititions.one typical example was where owl was photographed at night,in flight with a mouse in its beak,in full flight,but approaching its nest,with a flash using infra red trigger.in my wildest dreams i,w never take ahsot like that.the owl,s eyes are at that stage fully open,concentratring in landing safely to deliver food for the chicks.what if he or her,for the matter,gets blinded,which in this case,happened,but i think it was already on finals,hurts himself and acnnot look after its chicks anymore.photoclubs should be on the lookout for things like that,and educate their members.i never go out to do a shoot on anything,unless i,ve equipt myself with all the knowledge about whatever the topic for that shoot will be.in this case,again,i think,its photoclubs that can play a vital role.

I think it's completely up to the photographer. There's something to be said for forcing yourself to stick with what nature gives you and the challenge of making the best of it. There are also challenges and pleasures in artistically rearranging nature to make for the best photographs. It's completely a personal preference thing and I think people should feel comfortable with whatever they choose in this regard, provided they don't lie about how they did it.

 

Personally, I do lots of modification. There's really no other way, given my purposes. I photograph hundreds upon hundreds of insect specimens to try to document species relevant to fly fishing for identification purposes. Most of what I'm interested in lives underwater, and I need to have, for example, belly views to give fly tiers an idea of the color they need to use to imitate a particular insect. My tasks demand bringing insects into my lab/studio for semi-scientific processing.

 

And I'm perfectly okay with that... I get my thrill-of-the-hunt, at-one-with-nature kick from my fly fishing itself, and I take a more scientific and efficient approach to my insect photography. People should get their photos however they like (provided, of course, that they don't permanently harm a population or setting).