Originally Posted by
birdstrike
Very nice photos!
I think the definition is simpler than that. After all, the camera manipulates the RAW image before it outputs a JPEG. The amount and type of manipulation done by the camera depends on the processing setting you choose. RAW images, unprocessed, usually look like garbage, no?
This is FlyerTalk, not a professional gallery driven, megabuck contest. The voters will be your FlyerTalk peers. The injunction against substantial manipulation is based on the honor system. To my mind "substantially changes" would not mean cloning out a sensor dust spot, but it would include cloning out, say, an automobile, or changing the color of said automobile, or adding AS livery to a 777.
The image should generally reflect what you saw through your viewfinder. If manipulating contrast or color balance is what it takes to achieve that, I'd say go for it.
I posted a photo of a leaping dolphin in Trip Reports recently. I think it is a lovely photo (and quite hard to capture to boot). Problem is that dolphin has a remora attached to him. I wanted to clone it out, but I didn't.
Actually, this sounds like a perfect discussion for the proposed Travel Photography forum
Agreed...hopefully TPTB will vote to create that forum.
Personally, I don't have a problem with cloning, if it's done in the proper context. I probably wouldn't clone the remora out of your dolphin shot, since that's a natural phenomena, but in the Denali shot I linked above, the bus was unfortunately occupying the foreground where you can see the thin seam of road - the driver didn't give us enough stopping time for me to get farther away and compose the shot better. The clone job takes it from just being a snapshot to being an 8x10 on my living room wall, and it still accurately reflects what I saw, just fixing the fact that I couldn't hike 3 minutes roundtrip to get the framing I really wanted.
BTW, of the other 5 shots I posted above, only the first Hawaii sunset was shopped, and that was as an HDR image. The red waterfall looks unreal, but it was just a clever framing of a very small fall.