Thank you all for the posts and comments. It's interesting to hear other people ideas and feelings.
wmmk,
I am not purist (as you call it) either. And I, like you, use photohop to enhance my own images as you described you did. I have a ball doing it. I would not trade that opportunity for anything in the world as photography has been my hobby for many years (way before digital images). Where you and I seem to differ is that I will not shut off other creative opportunities using digital photography and prgm's like Photoshop. There is such a HUGE world out there of creative expression using this medium. I am extremely excited to have that opportunity. Since man created paint and canvas the painter has had the opportunity to either paint what he/she sees or create their own version of what they see. And I'm quite sure there were people who saw their "creative rendition" of the scene they painted and scoffed that they "were playing with, and destroying, reality" or "they were cheating" because they painted Spring flowers into an scene they were actually painting in the Summer. And those folks were certainly entitled to their opinion. For me, I'll just continue to take one of my images and create Photoshop magic. Learning to do this has been a breath of fresh air and I'm really not that good at it.......yet. The only limit to what you can create is your imagination and that's very intoxicating......to me anyway.
FWIW - Here's one my buddy sent to me a few days ago (we've been exchanging our creative efforts by email) . I think it's friggin' awesome. I can't help but be excited at having the opportunity to create this type of image and to live in a country where we are all allowed the freedom of having creative expression.
