All photographs manipulate just by the framing, timing, lens chosen, angle shot etc, etc. Personally I don't do any manipulation beyond cropping, levels, saturation tweeks and such like simple stuff because by and large that is not the kind of photography that appeals to me. However that does not make such manipulation wrong or deceptive as such but only when the photographer tries to deliberately deceive people as in much advertising photos and magazine shots in which, say, models are made to look "perfect" to the detriment of the readers pockets and often their self image. Fraud in other words. Similarly if a wild life photographer tries to pass off a captive animal photo as shot in the wild its wrong. Fraud again. Manipulated but open about it, no problem even if I don't like it.
The other thing which is wrong is people who take bad shots and then try to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. They only fool themselves and harm their own photographic development and perhaps some other people who are taken in by it and think if its "arty" it must per se be good. Gosh, such ramblings, but I hope it makes sense.

Deception occurs when a claim is made about the image that is untrue, whether or not image manipulation occured is beside the point.

"This is the lion I took a photograph of on my holiday in Kenya." is deception if you photoshopped a zoo lion.

"This is a photograph of British Soldiers abusing an Iraqi in the back of a truck." is deception if the photograph is stage managed.

"This photograph of X aged 70 who has used our anti-wrinkle cream for 50 years." is deception if the photo of X has been airbrushed to remove the wrinkles.

In none of the cases above is the image manipulation or stage management deception in itself.

I think Rob and Duncan have summed it up quite nicely for me.

I think the differences may fall in the personal rather than competition use. Comercial work I think lives in its own world where anything goes.

For competitions I would guess there has to be a level playing field between those using film processed through a lab like Colab, film home processors, digital novices and digital wizz kids. Not being a member of a Photograhic Club ( other than WPF :) ) I do not know if they set boundaries for competitions or not. As a regular viewer of BBC Countryfile the rule for digital entries follows.

BBC Countryfile Photographic Competition 2006 – Rules

Rule 4 : Images may be digitally enhanced to remove spots or scratches, but not manipulated. Entrants can enhance the picture to make it brighter, clearer etc, but not manipulate the content. BBC Countryfile and the judges reserve the right to exclude any image they believe may have been excessively treated so as to alter its authenticity.

Don

For me editing covers lightening, brightening, cropping and sharpening... basically tweeking what's there without any additions or removals.

Manipulating is when I start adding or removing sections to improve the shot. An example of mine is this shot of a robin, I took a few frames of the bird, but when I looked at them none were quite right. The best one was fine, apart from the fact that the bill was out of focus (motion blur), I took the bill from another shot and put it into this one.

This is clearly manipulation, although there was no intent to decive, as I've been totally up front about what I've done, and look at it more as an exercise in photoshopping.

I dont think this is relevant as I believe the deception idea was concerned with image only not following description.

I support the proposition of a manipulated image is deception through the addition or subtraction of subjects or artifacts.

I suspect the line is impossible to draw, how about correcting verticals? I don't think it is generally necessary or beneficial on buildings as verticals converge in perspective as well as horizontals (am about to shove one into the street competition where the perspective is important), but did correct on
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...500&ppuser=780
as building edges out of parallel with pic border in that case was ghastly

Chris,

Correcting for coverging vertials I do not regard as manipulation that needs to be declared. If you had access to a camera with a rising front lens panel, swings and tilts, you could have eliminated the effect at the time of taking the pic.

If in your link you had cloned out the car, road markings and parking sign then it would have in my opinion have reached the point of declaration that this had been done.

Don

Fine Don. I had to do a close crop to get rid of most of the car on the left and worse junk right and that led into the verticals problem

Chris,

Its a great picture taken in taxing conditions. You obviously took your time and considered the scene at the time and the compromise was the verticals. I see no problem, as we do not all have access to the specialist kit necessary to correct for this in camera.

Don

I'm at pains to understand what you mean by deception. A manipulated image does not deceive unless something is claimed for it that is knowingly incorrect.

The example given above about photos submited to the BBC country file, are submitted in accordance with rules as to what editing is and is not permissible, if you break those rules then you deceive. But there is nothing intrinsicaly wrong with having manipulated the image, the wrongness lies in the claim "This image has not been manipulated" when it is submitted to the BBC countryfile. In other contexts where such claims aren't being claimed then it makes no difference whether the image has been manipulated or not.

I don't think there are any niceties here, there are no degrees or grey areas. If you present an image in a context where unmanipulated images are expected, that has in fact been manipulated it then that is deception.

I've recently been looking at some of the landscape photographs by Ernst Haas and I can't tell whether the images were derived purely within the camera or whether there was a large amount of darkroom work involved. Personally I don't think it matters one iota.