To edit or not to edit: choosing to be a photographer or a digital artist
We all do it: editing the images we made to make them nicer, brighter, shinier, or even totally change their appearance and/or content. All photographers I know use Lightroom to enhance their images...or Photoshop, or GIMP, or NX2, or DxO, or ACDSee, or any of the many other photo editing software available.
The question is no longer "how far can we go", but has become "how far should we go". Current state of the art photo editing tools, combined with the enormous amount of photo data (pixel data) achieved with high quality sensors or scans allows us to do almost anything with our original images.
Quite some articles and blogs have been posted that champion what I would call the "purist" approach: in principle you should not (have to) change anything from your images, whatever effects or mood you want to achieve with your images should be achieved in-camera. For this group using any photo editing tool is almost heresy and if really needed, editing should be kept at a minimum. One of the arguments this group uses is that in the old-days-of-film no such thing as Photoshop existed and all this editing was not possible. They probably forget that the real masters of the darkroom, then and now, could and can edit an image to a very great extend using their developing and printing wizardry.
Although I usually try to get my final image as much as possible in-camera, I personally feel there is nothing wrong with even extreme photo editing. For me the question actually should not focus on editing yes or no, or to what extend editing should be "allowed". In my (very humble!) opinion the answer to that question will present itself when asking the question "what do I want to be".
As a creator of images consider asking yourself this question: do I want to be a photographer, or do I want to be a graphic artist? Yeah duh, you possibly will say; I want to make images with my camera, so I want to be a photographer. Sure, but let's take this one level deeper: what do you actually want to achieve with your photographs?
Do you want to create an image of the world around you "as it is", or do you want to use whatever you captured to create a new and unique work of art, never seen before? And of course, there even is a more important question underlying which needs to be answered first: why are you creating this image in the first place? Who is your client? Is it a newspaper or is it yourself trying to create something MoMa will kill for. Maybe that question is something that should be tackled in a future post...
Once you have answered the question about what you want to be, the question to what extend you should edit your images will be solved automatically. If you want to create "realistic" images, don't edit too much; if you want to achieve a highly creative end result, use all tools available to their fullest extend.
Easy!
Hmmm, maybe not...
How about using expired, or special film that will "alter" the image already in-camera? Or using lens filters? Or other technical means that impact the final outcome even before importing the image or its scan onto your hard drive (remember the ancient trick of Vaseline on a clear filter to create a foggy picture?).
Key here again is the question: what do you want to achieve, and what do you want to be, a photographer or an artist.
So then what's this photographer versus artist thing about? From my point of view there generally are two groups of photographers: those who want to create an image that predominantly is a realistic rendering of what they see (e.g. documentary photographers, street photographers, landscape photographers, food photographers), and those who want to use the photographic medium to create a "work of art".
Before you now all start overreacting: of course there is overlap, of course the photographer creates art, of course the photographer has an artistic vision too. What I'm getting here at is just to help me understand and decide on when or if I should edit or not.
Editing is great, when well done. And definitely should be done. And sometimes needs to be done. But please, keep three rules of the road in mind when doing it:
1. do it keeping in mind what your client/audience wants or needs;
2. do it only to achieve the image you have in mind (not because everyone does it);
3. be clear and open about the fact that you did it.
I wonder what your point of view is on the dilemma regarding editing or not.