My photoshop guilt is gone-- or at least subsided-- thanks to finding a display of late 19th Century photographers called "pictoralists."
the Phillips Collection museum in Washingtron DC recently had an exhibit on their work. As more amateurs were using cameras, these high-level photographers wanted to move away from plebian reality into what they saw as something more artistic. They used a variety of techniques to create "photographs that were more like paintings and drawings than the work of commercial portraitists or hobbyists."
They even added and subtracted segments to their "originals." Gasp. Way beyond simply using different papers and chemicals. This was roughly 1850- 1940. These pictoralists were supported and joined by luminaires such as Steinglitz, but eventually were overtaken by "Modernists" who primary goals were acuity and accuracy. (Steinglitz later switched sides.) I guess this is what produced the common belief that a photograph represents reality.
I still use photoshop quite sparingly, as I want to keep faith with the "original" but feel better about the whole thang now. And it's handy for shrugging off folks who say in an accusing manner "That was photoshopped!"
Thanks old timers.
(to whose for whom this is all old hat, I apologize for my late arrival.)
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The famous photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, was a long-time lover of Georgia O'Keefe, one of the best painters of the last 100 years. He gave her some of her earliest exhibitions (the Manhattan/Lake George series among them). They broke up when she decided to move to New Mexico to pursue that magical light that so enhances painting and photography.
That being said, photoshopping either digital or filmed images is not cheating. It's just another way to enhance a photographic image. I've spent countless hours in the darkroom and on the spotting table working on photographs. Whether using a certain color filter in the enlarger or in the computer is really no difference. It's in the final result - is that the image you want? Does it portray your feelings about the subject? Do you want it to look real or surreal? I've seen amazing work come out of darkrooms that even photoshopping can't touch (google Jerry Uelsmann, for example). Ansel Adams worked on negatives that should have been pitched in the trash, yet what he printed, using a phenomenal enlarger/printing system, has created remarkable images for the ages.
All else is just tools - do you judge a carpenter or plumber or potter or painter based on their tools or on their output?
The shot is in the eye of the artist not the lens of a camera, yes, the settings have to be right, contrast, saturation, exposure, and definition but it remains in the eye of the beholder to capture what is his or soul portraying the mirror of thoughts. Then snap, that wonderful little computer camera or digital whatever takes it. Still, it mirrors your thoughts and your lens. If you don't have the gift it will stay lifeless.
you can even send them away and turn them into rich paintings and 3D. Some do that and don't do it themselves, I try and stick to the old way and use my new camera picking up what I feel along the way.