When is a photo not a photo
I just picked up issue 95 of Digital Photographer and read an article about enhancing details of the sky. Hummm, I thought a little post processing, no harm, right?Well I was shocked to find that the article proposed layering images from separate photographs to accomplish this task. WHAT? A photograph is one shot not a crummy sky shot layered with a better stock photo sky shot as the article suggested. This is not Photography, it is DIGITAL ART. Some may contest that HDR is digital art; however, I disagree. In using HDR, multiple shots of the SAME context is layered to imitate what the eye actually sees – see my blog post to Photoshop or not to…
To blatantly take a sky, or any other part, from one image, whether you took the shot or not and layer it into another image you may or may not have shot is a kind of plagerism. Call me a purist or whatever you want. Digital software is quickly blurring the line between photography and digital art and frankly don’t like it. I’m going to rant to the editor about my opinion – maybe you’ll see it in an upcoming issue. I do still like this magazine, just a little peeved at this particular article.
