The Truth About Rehab: Yes, Yes, Yes!

 If you're a photographer, You have to include rehab in the places you must visit. Perhaps not in the literal sense (depending upon your inclination[s]) but A1, as Linda McMahon calls it, or AI as everyone else calls it, is transforming photography as you're sitting there reading this. In short, you have to rehab your images, to make them better. 

The truth is that AI does an amazing job of noise reduction. It also is great with sharpening. It can recover faces that were previously a blur, or a smear, or a shadow. Don't like an element in a picture? Get rid of it with the click of a mouse. People, places, things, dangling participles, you name it and POOF, it's gone, which leaves even the amateur photographer with a pithy conundrum: how much is too much? A famous saying circulating around the photo industry goes something like this: You can do anything you like, as long as nobody can tell you've done anything. 

Which inevitably leads us to a whole list of ethical issues for photographers: is it OK to stage shots? Take this one for example: 

It may look like it's staged, but as it turns out, It's not. Is one allowed to adjust perspective, or make horizons level? I do that all the time. Should you edit out stray pieces of paper or cigarette butts? I do, if I think they may be a distraction. Ansel Adams famously claimed that the negative was the score, and the print was the symphony. He dodged and burned his prints like a madman. I would hazard a guess that most photographers noodle their images, some more than others. My approach is that if an adjustment will improve an image, then it's fair game. Check out the images in my portfolios. some are barely touched, others are cropped, edited, adjusted, morphed and modified. If knowing this is disappointing, please get a grip. When you go to the movies surely you don't believe what you're watching is real. It's entertainment! 

So are my images. The are designed to make you, smile, cry, chuckle, laugh, ponder, travel, wonder, and react. I'm doing my best to entertain and tell stories. I hope I succeed.