That superb landscape photographer Bruce Percy has written this week about Post Editing in his blog. This echoes a number of recent articles elsewhere across the web and on paper about the mess we are allowing ourselves to get into on the subject of what we do using software to the image we have captured with our camera.

Following the debacle of the landscape Photographer of the year competition last year I have been thinking hard about about the whole area of image manipulation.

There seem to be those who will only accept the 'pure' image. The original transparency perhaps, even though that may also have been manipulated by careful filtration. Others hark back to the good old days of the darkroom and will accept anything that could have been done manually through burning, dodging, differential development, contrast control etc. Many of these advocates cheerfully erase recollection of the enormous amount of manipulation that went on including spotting, scraping and even airbrushing.

I read another point of view this week suggesting that the time is here when it will soon be impossible for all but the most forensically inclined to ever determine how much processing has taken place. The writer's view was to have done and accept whatever appears based entirely on it's merits. A free for all, just look at the picture and decide whether you like it or not. The problem that such a strategy creates is that or pure fantasy images that have nothing to do with a camera. is that a problem? Should we perhaps discuss whether we want to appreciate art or just art created in a specific way?

I'm not certain that we can go much further than arriving at something which, on a purely personal level, 'feels' right. In the next post I'd like to explore what that personal view looks like.