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What about all the digital composite images shown on the parent page? Is that "real photography"?
I read a blurb on a blog just a few days ago in which some sanctimonious nitwit said that anytime a portrait (or other) image was brought into Photoshop for enhancement or alteration, it was no longer photography, it was "pure quackery".
Let's examine this:
In the old (old) days, various fibers and leaves were used to create "paintings". Then someone got the idea to use little bands of animal hairs bound together with roots and voila-- the modern paintbrush was born. But the "pure" painters looked down their noses at those who would use this new and radical technology to create an image. They said that was "no longer painting" and the practice should be banned. Self righteous fools.
Now let's look at the small mind that claims digital enhancements are pure quackery and not photography. Are they saying that ANY enhancement to any photograph ruins it? They must be. So what about the photographer who uses electric (oh the horror) lights to more aesthetically illuminate his/her subject? That's not PURE photography -- it's altering the "real" and "natural" and "original" image using technology! So how can THAT be "real" photography?
Or how about the photographer who EVER prints ANY image onto ANY media? All sorts of changes to the original image take place simply by going through the printing process. One can significantly alter an image from its original by merely choosing various media. So how can THAT be "real" photography according to that peculiar mentality that thinks anything that's been Photoshopped isn't worthy of viewing?
Is shooting in black and white "quackery"? The "real" world is in color, after all.
I'm as tired of the narrow-minded as you are and if there's one place they will never belong it's associated with anything that involves expression. Almost every camera ever built does at least a bit of interpretation of the actual image, simply because it must bend light rays through lenses and they are NEVER represented perfectly accurately again. Even the lowly (but very cool) ancient pinhole camera that you probably made in grade school changes the image by virtue of the imperfect emulsion it uses to record the light rays, and the pinhole is never exactly symetrical. So not even THAT is "real" photography according to some boobs.
What IS "real" photography for God's sake? One can extrapolate it to any degree one desires and it just gets sillier and sillier. It's like computing the value of pi. If there IS a conclusion, mere mortals haven't found it. Every time you change your aperture (indeed, even the focus ring), you're altering the resultant image from the "original". It's like the proven realization that no experiment is ever perfect -- it is ALWAYS altered and affected by the experimenter. If a human so much as gazes upon a thing, s/he changes it.
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