A photo ethics question

[JohnElderRobison]

<p>This is the photo </p><div></div>

[james_turner6]

<p>Wonder if the OP is aware of <a href="http://www.alexnail.com/blog/news-updates/lpoty-2012/">this</a>. The disqualification was for too much photoshopping, but the blog that this link points to raises substantially your question about the propriety of the whole exercise. </p>

[david_senesac]

<p>A photographer can choose to shoot then post process mature subjects that have been shot by others any way they wish without having any ethical issues. I doubt if many serious photographers have ever spent much time considering such. However if what they are duplicating is work by a known photographer and plan to make the same work public, they are probably not going to be content merely copying as mere duplication tends to indicate a copy without skill or aesthetic vision. A lot more people can sense aesthetic value in exceptional prints than can explain why those images have that visual quality. When instructors leading students in the field to sites of strong subjects, many will be clueless as to where to best set their tripods down until an instructor explains the why on how to do so.<br /> <br /> As an old photographer with a lifetime of outdoor field work, other photographers will peruse websites like mine getting leads on productive places to visit. Fine I do the same or read guidebooks etc just like we all have always done. In this day of post processing Photoshop work, the status quo for many is to manipulate an image to maximum believability by saturating, increasing contrast, changing hues, removing awkward elements like out of focus branches, with some even adding elements like clouds. What does bother me is when someone locates then makes a similar image of a unique location I've shot and publicly presented in a reasonably natural way, but then post process manipulates that same image to something totally unnatural without even the tiniest public explanation. Such is more common for landscapes of colorful geology, especially those with reddish hues, where a manipulated presentation ends up some impossible gaudy red that those in the public without experience visiting such places will predictably blubber oohing and ahhing over.</p>

<p>David<br>

<a href="http://www.davidsenesac.com">http://www.davidsenesac.com</a></p>

[scott_murphy5]

<p>I don't see any problems with ethics here. There have been <em>many</em> photographs of Half Dome in Yosemite NP taken from similar locations used by Ansel Adams.</p>