As a member of
NAPP, I'm a firm believer in post processing.
I don't view Photographs as untouchable holy grails as that logic fails to comprehend for me. If one person has a feature in a camera that another doesn't - how is one photograph more 'authentic and genuine' than another? Where is the line drawn with what 'feature' kills photography? Does someone with image stabilization in their lens have a 'less authentic' photograph than someone shooting with an old film camera without the feature? What if the camera had a built in post processing engine - would it be "authentic" then? What makes a post processed image any less a "photograph" than another? Where is the line drawn?
I believe the line should not be if an image is enhanced or not, but whether it is meant to be a documentary of the moment, or a beautiful picture. A picture should be what the photographer wants it to be. How is it any different than a "photo journalist" who takes a photo while cropping out the surrounding content in order to manipulate the image? (Don't even get me started on the political aspect and bias of our main stream media,
such as this as an example). But by simply changing the focus or DOF of the image, that image portrays a totally different picture that what the actual circumstances are. Obviously, digital adding or removing content of a situation meant as a documentary could be an outright fraud.
But I think photography has evolved into a much more dynamic "art". Like many forms of art, there are so many ways to interpret it and go about it. I've seen photos turned into digital 'paintings' that are fantastic, or digital images that weren't great out of the camera become beautiful images to look at thanks to post processing. Should those images be denied to viewers because the photographer didn't capture the "proper settings or technique" at that moment?
