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I normally skip the scenic photos, but the colors here prompted me to give a look. Very quite, serene. Very nice.

Anthony, thank you! Probably my favorite photographic genre, photographers photographing themselves. Often we reveal extremely intimate insights about ourselves very unintentionally in our self portraits and even in our portraits of others. On the other hand, you seem to have tried to paint this self portrait with a daringly bold and broad brush. I will be studying this one for weeks trying to figure out what you actually may be wanting to say about Anthony. Marvelous!

I will admit that I am woefully ignorant of the female anatomy and embarrassingly deficient in experience. But in my sixty plus years Im not sure that I ever saw that part! Thanks for showing it. Where exactly did you say it was located?

Being a geeky photographer type, I , of course, find the photo very interesting. What would be more interesting would be to know that your wife thinks of the photo. It is always interesting to see how men handle photographing women with whom they have strong emotional attachments.

Well, I like ducks and I agree, Omar, that this hooded merganser does have striking eyes. I also like it that the duck crisply jumps out from the soft background as well as the colors of the reflections in the water.

I can see why this is one of your personal favorites. I love the gold light shimmering on the wet surfaces. Although I like the way the light leads into the photo from the left corner, I believe that it does emphasize the subject matter more to crop out the dark triangle on the left side. The photo does seem to have two competing points of interest the shadowy figure of the man and the taxi cab. Rather than cropping out the triangle, try cropping out the taxi and leave the light leading to the shadowy figure and see what you think.

Three things are very impressive about your photo. (1) You waited an hour, showing the patience and tenacity that is often required to get that exceptional photo. (2) You were too naïve (read: creative, inventive) to know that you werent suppose to put anything in front of the lens that was not optically flat (preferably a gel) which contributed a very interesting coloration. (3) You have incredible luck! Youre going to make one ____ of a photographer when you learn how to do it!

I dont recognize the person, but judging from the microphone, I would assume he is a person that is either giving a very emotional talk, or is singing a very emotional, probably sad, song. Taking that to be the case, I would judge that he would not use this photo in the lobby to attract patrons, but I highly doubt that he would consider it an unflattering portrait. Capturing emotions, even in not the most flattering poses, is one of the greater goals of photography as it is in any expressive medium , even lecturing or singing.

It seems to me that the answer to your question stems from your need or desire to take photographs. If you take photos to record the reality of the world, then probably no manipulation would be acceptable. If you, like a lot of us, take photos to express an artistic yearning or self expression then anything goes. In that case it seems immaterial whether or not the end results would or would not still be considered a photograph. The photograph becomes no more than the blank canvas or the lump of clay. It is merely a means to the end, an artistic medium, as is the camera to the unmanipulated photograph.