Hi Everyone 

As a professional fine art, corporate and conference photographer in Edinburgh and around Scotland I am accustomed to all the wonderful innovative software that is available for photographers nowadays, however I think there is a line that needs to drawn.  So for this blog, I have decided to have a discussion about editing, both its uses and the future of manipulation in general.  All photographers have faced this dilemma before and we have all discussed it with each other.  When expressing some reservations about over manipulation, a photographer once said to me “but you are an infrared photographer, which is a surreal photographic genre”.  My answer was that infrared light is already present and it is only the naked eye that is unable to detect it.   Also, I tend only to swap the colour channels, spending very little time on editing the images.  Still on the subject of landscape photography in Scotland, I personally feel that swapping skies, or backgrounds is a step too far.  The scene in front of you simply hasn’t ever existed and is just digital graphic at best.  Part of landscape photography is capturing the moment and the atmosphere, so creating a non existent image is far removed from that description.  There are also some portrait photography software companies that over-manipulate the photos.  I won’t mention any names, changing the shape and look of a human being to excess is not a photograph, let’s keep it moderate, without overly digitising the image.  If you are spending ages on one photo, you probably haven’t taken a good one.  Don’t get me wrong, I use photoshop and particularly like the On One software and Nik filters but I also feel we have to protect the profession and keep it real.

We can discuss his in more detail later, so until next time, take care and stay safe.

Kind Regards

Colin

www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk

www.edinburghphotographer.com