Is it Art or Is it Photoshop?

I've noticed that a certain segment of photographers think that Photoshop is cheating.  They proclaim "I shoot everything in JPEG because a good photographer gets it right in the camera.  They casually mention that they don't manipulate their photos.  They brag that they don't "Spray and Pray" - they take a single shot at the exact peak moment so they can spend their time shooting instead of sitting behind a computer.

These attitudes made perfect sense last century when film was still used.  Back then, if your camera wasn't level, the "water in the lake would all run out of the side of your photo".   It was difficult to crop photos - especially slides.  It's easy to forget that the majority of photographers paid a photo lab to make many of the decisions that are now made in Photoshop.   If you look at old publications you will see that one of the biggest changes that came with digital was that standards have gone up. 

 

I spent some time today looking at photos I took on a vacation last year.  I wouldn't be able to afford the number of shots I take if I still used film.  I take vacation photos for many reasons.  I take a photo of my car and a street sign near it so I can find it again later.  I may take a photo of a map we pass so that we have it available later when we need it.  Many of my photos are simply visual notes to jog my memory.  I never intend that the majority of my photos should ever be considered art.

I came across a vacation  photo today and tried to remember what had caught my eye as I made the exposure.  It was a night time shot that was made at the limit of my equipment and ability without using a tripod.  The ISO was 1600 and the shutter speed was 1/8 second.  Most of the image was severely underexposed and portions were overexposed.  Digital doesn't have the dynamic range to capture this scene.  If I wanted to photograph this street, I should have used HDR. 

Photomatix Pro does tone map single exposures.  I decided to see what it would do with this image.  The before and after image is shown at the start of this article. Compare the two.  Is it art?  It certainly doesn't look like a realistic photo.  But in many ways it looks more like the scene I photographed than the original image does.  My eyes saw more of a dynamic range than digital could capture and the HDR version shows these details.  I like the HDR version best today.  Your opinion may differ and I may agree with you tomorrow.  Thanks for sharing the moment with me.