Is Editing Your Photos Cheating?
There's an age-old debate of whether editing your photos is cheating or a necessary part of the photography work flow and even a critical part of the creative process.
When I began shooting photos I was very much against editing as I felt it was cheating. I felt it was important that photos portrayed reality as closely as possible and that every alteration was a lie and conveying a picture that was unfaithful to reality. This argument is very important for photojournalists who are paid to present reality in the most accurate way and their integrity is at stake if the photo seems fake. This is the reason that photojournalists are very limited in the kind of editing they are permitted to submit for editorial pieces and may only perform the most basic editing in order to ensure that the images aren't altered too much.
However, as I gained more experience, I realized that every photograph is biased. Even "unbiased" photographs that appear in the news. Every photographer chooses what to include in his or her frame, the distance they stand keep from their subject, the exact moment they hit the shutter release as well as the lens, depth of field and shutter speed they use. Each of these choices affects the final image immensely and each of these choices is made based on the photographer's taste, opinions and preferences. Every such choice is reflected in photographers' images. This is what creates a photographer's unique style. Once I understood this, I realized that editing is another tool that helps me as a photographer convey the visioned I had in mind prior to hitting the shutter release button. Today when I shoot a photo, I usually have a vision of what my final edited image will look like. Here are a couple of before and after examples I've shot.
While taking the following photo of Yuanyang's rice terraces, I exposed my photo for the green landscape while slightly underexposing. I was hoping I could later add exposure to the foreground and recover the shadows, while having enough data to darkening the highlights a bit in order to get more detail in the sky.
The next photo was taken after midnight in Hong Kong's Mong Kok Ladies Market using the street lights and neon signs as my light source. This meant I was using a higher ISO. Since I wanted to keep my ISO as low as possible in order to have less grain in the picture, I underexposed the shot with the intention of later bumping up the exposure and brightening the shadows.
In this portrait of the baba taken in Pushkar, India, I exposed my photograph for the man's skin. Later in post, I decreased the brightness and highlights in order to recover the background as well as get more detail in his beard, while brightening the shadows in his eyes.
In future posts I will share some of my editing workflows so you can get a better idea of how I edit my own photos and perhaps improve your own editing workflow.
Keep up the good light!
Yehonathan