Photo Manipulation! WHAT!

Well, this is a subject many photographers won't even talk about.  A photograph is an image created with camera and that's it.  Photo=Light and Graphic=Writing.  So where is the line between that and art.  Photographs are considered art...right!  Manipulation of photos goes way back.  How far?  I don't know.  The darkroom allowed quite a bit of manipulation with dodge and burn.  You could even add negitave and positive objects to the photograph during exposure.  I know, I've done it.  By accident of course.  Before color, I know that the painting of a photograph to add color wasn't uncommon.  In my young years of photography, I colored a photograph of my grandmother with colors.  Today we call it hand-colored photograph.  I love it.  It's great stuff.  So, with today's technology, how far can we go.  I am a photographer, and an artist.  Can I do anything I want.  You betcha.  And I do.  It's the customer who decides weather their buying a piece of art or a photograph.  And I like to play.

There is another factor to consider today.  High Dynamic Range (HDR).  In the day, we as photographers would take three shots of the subject.  It is called bracketing.  Why?  We couldn't see or preview the image like we can today.  To protect ourselves we bracketed.  Three shots, one normal exposure, one underexposed, and the third overexposed.  Today, with modern technology, we can combine all three images with HDR programs to capture all the highlights, and contrasts for the best possible picture.  Example, this is a normally exposed picture.  Is it the correct exposure?  Don't know, but this is what it is.

Pretty much right out of the camera.   A little straightening, and slight exposure adjustment.  It was a little underexposed.  However, I bracketed my images and used Photomatix Pro and combined the three of them to get the following image.  Combining contrasts and highlights with the normal image for this results.

 

Or here is one combined in Photoshop CS5's HDR Pro program.  I have been using this one more trying to get a natural looking image.

So, you might ask, what can you do with this?  Being honest, I bracket all my shots to get the best image any time of the day.  So let see what we can do with this technology.  We can do something like this which seems to be popular today.

and this

or maybe this

 

 Depending on how much time you want to spend there are many ways you can manipulate an image.  Is it then considered art rather than a photograph.  Your the buyer, which is it.