Exercise 21 - enhancement

Original image



As shot

Selection 1 - full face

Having done very little portraiture, I really enjoyed this exercise and learnt a lot. Adding contrast adjustment alone altered the image significantly, bring it to life and creating an almost 3D effect.



With brightness/contrast adjustment

I'm not sure that I would consider this type of alteration as 'tampering' in the truest sense of the word; I think more along the lines of 'making the most of what you have' - rather like women wearing makeup.

I have subsequently revisited some on my better head shots and given them a make-over. Fascinating stuff!





Selection 2 - eyes only

Quite often I increase the saturation in my photographs, sometimes generally and sometimes a specific colour. I don't recall every having saturated a selection.

Real

Blue 

Saturating eye colour - does this fall into the 'tampering' category? Possibly.

Green

Changing eye colour - does this fall into the 'tampering' category? Almost certainly.

Besides which, it was actually quite disconcerting looking at my husband with the wrong colour eyes.

Having said that, if the colour change was effected on clothing I don't believe this would fall into the category of tampering.

Time for a pertinent aside: Whilst shopping in-store I saw a photograph of a model wearing purple shorts, unable to find said items I asked for assistance. The lady directed me to blue shorts, when I queried the colour she replied that "a lot of people had commented on that". I didn't buy the blue shorts.

I think this is where the boundaries start to blur and a lot of the time I don't think there is an absolute answer - if there were we wouldn't be doing this exercise.

Is tampering wrong?

Yes, if what you are doing is morally wrong - lying to defraud or to cause harm.

No, if you're selling a dream...

Lets face it, we all know that you shouldn't believe anything your see/read in the newspapers or any other form of media for that matter. I could continue on this theme but no doubt it would become very cynical, best just to leave it at: Buyer Beware!