Yesterday evening I attended a presentation by Colin Smith from Adobe.  The main topic was how to use Photoshop to manipulate photos to achieve the desired result.  If you have reviewed my gallery, you can see in many images that some post processing (editing images with software) has been performed.  Some in the photographic world despise this and dismiss these altered images entirely.  There is a group that sits in the middle that approve of software for reducing noise or sharpening an image.  Then you have the group that I belong to – ANYTHING goes.  The idea is that a good image is a good image – and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  When altering my images, the idea is not to deceive the viewer…rather the opposite.  It is to reveal a new perspective.  I respect all photographers and understand it can be easy to get carried away with editing.  Additionally the importance of taking a good photograph with the camera is not lost on me.  This is and continues to be my main goal.  To me photography is art and art is expression.

This is a small example of a photograph with the original and altered version side by side.  Initially I completed dismissed this picture.  Then, while reviewing some old material, I re-discovered its potential.