New Beginnings

In spite of my previous assertion that I was not going to keep up this blog I have changed my mind. I am going to just use this space for all things photographic. A lot of people who know me are aware that I took a lot of convincing to go digital but I am glad that I did, although I am still to be persuaded by a lot of the manipulation that people use to 'improve' their images.
For me the image should be largely unchanged from the original that was taken with the exception of cropping and correcting the sort of errors that used to be carried out on the final print such as removing dust spots. After all the art is the creation of the image from reality, what does concern me is the way that software like Photoshop (tm) is used to alter reality -for example I saw an article in a photojournal on how to improve a landscape picture by moving some rocks in the foreground to make a more pleasing composition, surely this is something that is best done in the field by using a combination of choosing the right viewpoint and using the right lens to give the desired perspective. I just wonder how far it will go before someone starts to call this manipulation what it really is as to me it is not true photography but digital photomontage instead...