By its very nature, photography can capture a scene "in the moment," but even that is not always the entire scene, the entire context in which the scene is seen by observers.... "Lying" is too strong a word. Is it "lying" when Mom dresses the kids up in their best clothes, dresses herself in her own best, and puts on a little makeup and makes sure her hair looks nice before having Dad get out the camera and take a family photo or the entire family goes off to a professional photography studio for formal photos? Everyone's faces are their faces, their hair coloring their hair coloring, etc. -- but we all know that most days Mom, Dad and the kids aren't that dressed up!
By capturing a sliver or a portion of a scene or an object, the photographer is not lying when he or she shows just that image rather than an image depicting the entire scene or entire object.... He or she is artistically dissecting the subject to reveal new, intriguing aspects of it which otherwise might go unnoticed. At times a partial display of a subject or a scene still tells the whole story. The whole IS the sum of its parts.....
Is the photo I put into today's POTD a "lie" because it is an abstract view of an object, shot while playing with light to get a desired effect? Sure, OK, the shot is not showing all the reality there, as the viewer sees only what I want him or her to see, not the backdrop, the rest of the items on the table, the actual surface of the table itself, etc.
All that's even before the photographer takes the memory card and sticks it into the card reader to bring it up on the computer screen! The process of shooting digital photos is quite different from the process of then choosing what to do with the image afterward -- how much to edit it? Are there bits which could be eliminated from the image because they are distracting? Could a thoughtful crop result in a much stronger image with more impact?
I used to hate post-processing and I'm still not overly fond of it but at least I have made peace with it and have learned a few more skills along the way, as well as appreciating that the folks who develop and provide the editing software also have been making it a little more intuitive, a little easier and therefore less time-consuming, too. I shoot in RAW in order to provide myself latitude when working on an image, especially when I'm doing something a bit "artsy." When I edit images of nature, such as birds, squirrels, etc., I prefer to keep things pretty realistic and as I saw the subject or the scene.....that said, though, the other day I DID post a sort of dramatic shot of a Hooded Merganser, deliberately underexposing and playing up the darker tones in the water. I went a bit further with that darkening effect once I was editing the image. Was that "lying" because in reality when I shot that scene the sun was shining brightly and the way it was lighting the water was creating an interesting darker effect. Most of the time, though, my birds and squirrels and such look just as they are supposed to look!
When doing an abstract or tabletop image of some sort, that's when I start playing around more creatively, seeing what happens when I do this or do that with the light. Then, once seated at the computer with the image on the screen I sometimes go a bit further with that, even occasionally using filters to create a totally different effect than the way the image originally looked. That's more getting into the realm of "digital art," wouldn't you say?
For a while people were going kind of nuts with HDR and I saw some mighty garish examples of it, where the photographer ruined a perfectly decent landscape scene by presenting it with such vivid, popped-out colors that it became unattractive. Trying to strike the fine balance between "enhancing" and "overdoing" or "overcooking" can be a delicate process and it's not surprising that some people just don't bother to take the time to make the landscape scene look somewhat realistic.
I'm not someone who'll ever go putting in clouds where there were no clouds in my original image, nor will I ever create any sort of composite scene -- to me that is going a little far, and aside from that, I don't have the skills, nor do I care to learn them. This is the area, though, where the whole concept of "lying" could come into play if the photographer presents a composite image or a scene with really striking cloud formation and allows people to think that this scene is exactly the way he or she shot it. If someone is upfront and honest about their digital art, their composite, their clouds that were installed courtesy of Luminar or Photoshop, that's fine.... Unfortunately not everyone is that forthcoming and just smiles at the compliments.
There's "Digital Art". There's "Straight Photography". Photography is an art AND a science, built on chemicals and technology. Some forms of photography need to be absolutely ruthless in the truth of what they are revealing -- documentary photography, forensic photography, etc. Other forms offer the photographer a bit more latitude. I daresay most of us reside in that in-between area....
