The bottom line is what we 'see' versus what we actually present on paper in the end has always been a manipulation of reality to get there. Whether it be through the use of a filter, digital devices, etc. The photo is not reality, just a representation of it.

But having said that, the skill of the photographer is still the most important part. The tools and devices are just a supplement.

I can see that new technology is frowned upon by some, those that still prefer take and leave the picture 'as it is.'

It's a controversial topic for photographers. For me, if colour, content, light and all that fits my image of a good photograph, it's a winner.

It's all very subjective really isn't it?

Hmmm, not sure if my memory stick got wet too in that downpour, but I've a different take on what was being argued, from my point of view at least.

It's not a technology versus traditional means argument at all. Neither is it an argument that altering the image with or without technology after the event invalidates the snap(!). For me that's just a modern extension of the technical bits of photography - the development process, lighting etc. My argument was that, for me, the true talent in photography was in capturing something in as interesting and perhaps original way possible in the moment that it looks and feels that way to the photographer. The rest of it is playing around with stuff that can be learned in a class in a few hours.

In that sense I think that I would be more inclined towards a traditional view of photography, in terms of it being the capturing an image or moment in time. That's all it does - call it a reality or representation of a reality... whatever, it doesn't matter. If you subsequently change that you're probably creating a new reality rather than altering the reality. Because once you change that image, as it represents how the subject looked when the photo was taken, it destroys 'the photograph' and creates a new picture, based on the original photo.

Then again, I haven't a clue what I'm talking about....

I've had to think about this a little...and this is what I think.

A lot of the beauty in Ansel Adams' photography came from his skill in printing his pictures from his negatives...ie, how long he left the paper in various solutions. I'm not an expert in this area of photography but I remember someone giving me a practical demonstration of this when I was 12.

No doubt some total purists would scream in pain at the thought that improving a photograph through manipulating the printing process is not that dissimilar to the process of using Photoshop to do things with a scanned version of the picture. But in reality...there isn't really a difference, is there? You're using the tools at your disposal, be it Photoshop or a knowledge of the chemistry of photography, to improve upon the moment.

I don't currently develop my own photographs although my main objective for this year is to change that situation, to some extent anyway. I do occasionally use Photoshop Elements, mainly to resize pictures, or crop them, mainly for this website of my photography which is so constantly under construction it's scary.

It's a dilemma I struggled with when I first started digital photography and scanned my slides. I always believed in using as few struts as possible when taking my color photographs and refrained from using most filters and even the use of electronically enhanced cameras. I believed that it was at the moment of taking a photograph that I had to show my skills as a photographer, and the understanding of light, color, contrast, and composition was what made a good or bad photograph. As I began my foray into digital, however, I began to see more immediately that all photography is a manipulation of your personal perception, that there is no camera or pen that can ever accurately portray what you perceive in your mind's eye. Whether with the use of a manual camera with black and white film (in which case filters are a necessity, simply because of how light works and how the human eye perceives shades of grey) or the choosing of different speeds and emulsions of slide film, or the use of infrared film or Tri-X or Ilford or posterizing film, or the difference in the blurred glass of a cheap camera versus a pinhole camera versus panoramic lens versus a telephoto lens versus a large format field camera versus a super high depth-of-field endoscope lens versus an electron microscope, or the use of a low resolution digital camera versus a high defintion digital camera, they are all manipulations of the light entering the camera lens. And people change each of these tools at will. I began to realize that using tools such as PhotoShop is just an extension of this, allowing me to get closer to what it was that I imagined when I first conceived the photo.

For example it is impossible, with a conventional camera, to balance the contrast in light in a subject that is both in direct sunlight and in the shade. You have to take a measurement from one or the other, and then make a compromise. With burning and dodging in traditional film development and with image stacking in digital photography you can bring out both the light and the dark aspects of the photograph that your eye naturally compensates for in the brain (your personal PhotoShop).

Working in PhotoShop has also allowed me to play around with dead images and come up with surprising and previously unimagined results. The clarity of subtle unsharp masking and color adjustments has punched out photogrpahs in such a way that they seem nearly as real as what I saw in real life. Or sometimes I go the opposite way and try to manipulate the photo in a more painterly way, blurring the colors and attempting to make the image more impressionistic than real.

As a photographer and an illustrator I use the camera and pen as ways to interpret what I see in my mind. What is "out there" is only the focusing of perception. No one seems to question the validity of a blind photographer, who can't even "see" the photographs he takes, or the hundreds of different tools that an painter uses, so why are photographers admonished for using their own tools? After all, photography is not reality. It isn't even the original light!

Great comments folks. Cheers. Speedy, you put your own case much better than I did for you.