Pardon me for sticking a size 9 boot in, but as far as I am concerned a photo is a photo is the photo that was taken with whatever lens and recording medium was in use at the time, unedited save for appropriate and modest cropping.
Full stop.
Now that's an art form called photography.
Messing about with images after the event using computer imaging manipulation technology is something entirely different. It's not photography and its certainly not an art. Craft maybe. There's nothing wrong with a craft or a craftsman legitimately proud of his craft and exercising it well.
But its the difference between the art of photography and the work-a-day everyday pixell popping photoshopping craft of image manipulation to suit the commercial or other desires of the photographer. Its not that priceless and irreplaceable and unique microsecond of the real captured by the shutter and lens on that moment. Art that ain't. What do you think de Bresson or Fox would have made of photo manipulation software do you think ?
I agree to some extent, Mr Kipling. Certainly every image should have form and purpose long before it reaches Photoshop. But artistry doesn't end there.
What separeates art from science is precision; there is no 'right' way to make art, it is purely subjective, an interpretation.
If I adjust an image in PS to bring up the dark tones and reduce the highlights, that has a fixed end point; it improves the picture
technically. But if I crop the image, or burn in the shadows or vignette it, I
choose where to make those adjustments. It is interpretation, and undoubtedly art. Pressing the 'watercolor filter' button to make a pseudo painting definitely isn't.
Photographers including Cartier Bresson have been post-processing images since the year dot. It's not an effort to improve the scene they saw but a way of addressing the inadequacy of photography to capture all the nuances.
