What is acceptable with digital techniques?

What is acceptable with digital techniques?

July 15th, 2008 Rob Sheppard

I just had one of my BetterPhoto.com publication photography students ask me about digital techniques — what do publications find acceptable or not acceptable. This is not a simple question and I could spend a lot of time on the answer.

I have talked a bit about this in my columns for Outdoor Photographer (Digital Horizons), which are available on the OP website (www.outdoorphotographer.com). Also, I have talked about this issue and HDR in this blog.

First off, you will find a lot of folks in the business (like me) separate enhancement from manipulation. The distinction is important.

Enhancement optimizes or brings out the best from a photograph.

Manipulation changes it from the original scene.

Most publications are fine with some sort of enhancement. Some publications will use manipulated images, too, though they will often call these “photo illustrations.”

Publications really vary as to what they will or won’t accept. Partly this is due to digital being so new. This is also due to the fact that many editors and art directors are baby boomers (my generation) who were never comfortable with computers, never got into the business to deal with digital stuff, and still don’t completely like it. Not knowing better, or even fearful of the technologies, they will often put arbitrary restrictions on digital photography that have no basis in reality. But these become rules that a photographer has to pay attention to if he or she wants to work for individual publications.

I think photo enhancement techniques including photo-stitching, multiple exposure blending techniques and HDR are not only acceptable, but actually allow us to show reality. They offer us the possibility of truly capturing images from the world as we see the world, not simply limited by camera technology. This has the potential of really helping us as photographers better communicate about the way the world really is, as compared to the limited world that is captured by traditional photographic techniques. Still, there are a lot of fears by the above-mentioned baby boomers, and therefore, added restrictions.

There is the question, should a photographer “disclose” these things at the time of submission? I think if you are doing severe manipulation of the image, yes, that should be disclosed. However, if you are bringing a photo closer to the real world, I don’t see the point. There are those who disagree with that, but I believe if we are to always disclose techniques just because they are techniques, then all photographers must disclose any artificial techniques, which would include flash and graduated neutral density filters (have you ever seen flash in nature? or graduated neutral density filters?).

We will be dealing with these issues for years as digital technology gradually becomes more a part of photography … and frankly, when baby boomers retire!