Comment by foxglacier
1 day ago
You mean people's brains selectively enhance the contrast of the mountains so he's trying to reproduce that perception?
In these cases, it's clearly not to replicate what the photographer saw with his unaided eyes because he wouldn't have been able to see such detail so far away. Is it to replicate what he saw through the viewfinder?
A lot of photographers here. Do you guys impose some kind of personal restrictions on what types of processing or instruments you use to make it "honest" or not-cheating? How does that work?
> Is it to replicate what he saw through the viewfinder?
The experience is bigger than "saw".
Is it to hint at what they felt?
Later, looking at a purely-2d-visual representation is a different kind of experience than being there.
Yes, people's brains selectively modify contrast, saturation, detail, framing, and just about every parameter there is.
When it comes to visual experiences, it is meaningless to talk about "honesty" because they are so subjective. That's one of the greatest joys of looking at other photographers' interpretations of familiar subjects: they see things so differently.
Restrictions on processing make sense, but they are not easy rules, because they depend on the purpose of the image. I suspect the most restricted are people in news -- they operate on similar principles as those who write the articles. In other words, there are no forbidden technical procedures, but the end product must effectively convey a real-world event (from some perspective -- news is always biased.)
> it is meaningless to talk about "honesty" because they are so subjective.
One can still choose to deliberately misrepresent something that is subjective.