A Distinction between Editing and Manipulation
Reading Don Hoey's comment concerning increasing exposure of Yelvertoft's Pentax camera still life shot within Photoshop (see below pic 1&2), I wonder if the practice of editing in this way is commonplace and where editing become manipulation. Changing exposure of any shot is acceptable if the shot cannot be repeated which covers 75% of all amateur photography however with still life the shot is repeatable and in my opinion exposure compensation should have been considered in the camera rather than the darkroom.
A second example is my Olympus compact pair still life shot (pic 3) where I am encouraged to remove white hot spots from lens and viewfinder, is this acceptable? Perhaps so but could removal of these artifacts be done by rotating the subject of moving the light source slightly?
Removal of dust spots is acceptable and routine in digital photography, anyone notice the shot of the Olympus pair is different to the one posted in my gallery, the difference is on the XA, its cleaner (although no perfect!) and the white base was also cleaned so minimum dust removal was required on the final effort.
So where is the distinction between acceptable editing and outright manipulation?
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