Post Processing of Event Photos

There was an article in American Photography a few years ago debating the "pure" form of photography vs. the more "modern digital" art. The purists proposed that the skill in taking the photograph well in the first place; where no post processing of individual sections just re-sizing, cropping and overall image processing changes to the entire photo as a whole should be allowed in shows and contests. Another side was that any image where only a part of an image is adjusted because of an error of some type should have a separate classification indicating that type of modification. Not judging, just looking for peoples perspectives.

As someone who spent a lot of time working with transparencies, film, and prints, and relatively new to digital, i'm still working out my relationship to the e-medium.

I was trying to draw distinctions between the level and kinds of "processing" that most people would feel is appropriate to work that has different purposes, markets, or audiences, so i would not use overly broad terms like "true photography."

For better or worse, i think most people's notion of how a photograph "should" look has been mostly formed by the long period in which film-based technology was the primary means of image making. I think that's still the standard by which a photograph is viewed.

But, again, depending on the venue, there are different levels of acceptance of "manipulation." Documentary photography had, perhaps, more of a requirement to look "real," whereas "fine art" photographers, or commercial illustrative photographers had more license to take images in directions apart from "straight" documentation.

But even in photojournalism, the photographer can make choices in lens selection, framing, viewpoint, exposure, etc. to emphasize some particular aspect of a scene, even for a "straight" photograph.

People now grumble about "overcooked" processing and HDR, but this is really just the modern equivalent of burning a print too heavily burnt or dodged.

I think that when the techniques applied to an image—all through the process of making the image—serve the intent of the photographer and the integrity of the image, then it's valid. When something is done randomly, or excessively, or just for it's own sake without regard to the overall concept of the image, then it's just so much random visual noise, much like a musician playing notes randomly too loud in an orchestra.