Photography & Ethics: Photo Manipulation

In the recent weeks of course, a number of techniques in photography have been explored. Something that I found to be quite unique of most of the photos looked at was the abstractness of the images and how the related more to images of art. To me, photography is an art form and images can be manipulated to create other variations of the art works that are derived from photography. With that said, for this photo manipulation assignment, I have become the photographer and have edited and altered my own images to create my own pieces of art to illustrate how photography can be considered an art form. Editing photographs can allow the photographer to add their own personal influences to images that were not present in the original. I have taken my own abstract images and edited the originals to create something unique, with inspiration from the week four’s topic. This topic on whether photography is art made me feel compelled to make my edited photographs using Pixlr (an online editing tool) into something that looked more like artwork than just an ordinary set of photographs.

The first image I chose to capture was that of the book (see below). With the original image I attempted to take an abstract photograph of just the open pages. Once I edited the image, it took on a more art-inspired feel (see below). In this photo, I adjusted the saturation levels to a hue that resembles a sepia tone and darkened the image. I also inserted a vignette to have a more aged appeal to it. In the second image of the lilies (see below), I attempted the abstract image once again. However with this photo, I felt that more colour was needed to have more appeal. Again, as like the first image, I adjusted the saturation levels, but this time I wanted to create more colour to create a livelier look to it (see below). The pink-purple tones give the flowers a more lively impression and create an image that almost looks like a piece of art work.

I felt that these changes to both original images were necessary to illustrate the topic that photography is art. This particular topic hits close to home for me because I feel, as an avid photographer, that art is an expression of individualism and personality, which I wanted to be seen in my own edited images for this assignment. In both images I decided to adjust saturation level mostly to hues that were appropriate for both images. I did this because I felt that the importance and uniqueness of both images could be better understood with the addition of more colour, especially in the both of the edited photographs. With the photograph of the book, it creates a more vintage and antique feel to it. Whereas, the photograph of the flower looks more alive and vivid, and in my opinion, looks more like a piece of painted art. In conclusion, I feel that the use of editing is quite useful in photography and can allow an image to take on various variations of the original image that was attempted to be portrayed. Adjusting photographs can allow a photographer to add their own personal touches to images of reality that were not present in the original image.