Beverly Guhl 
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Upload & Sell: Off
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Khun Hans wrote:
Thanks Beverly. I shot it out of a small Cessna on Thursday piloted by my friend. The windows are covered/laminated with a slightly blue film. The WA Rules saying: Your entries for the weekly assignment should highlight your photographic skills, not your software knowledge 
I agree with John. The rule reads, "Montage techniques are allowed but should be functional and kept to a minimum. Your entries for the weekly assignment should highlight your photographic skills, not your software knowledge." Montage requires digital manipulation! Highlighting your photographic skills doesn't mean you can't adjust your image at all, since there is mention of software, too. The question is which to highlight. I used to feel as you do, but when I started posting here 3 years ago Fred mentioned in the rules what he meant by software, indicating it was ok to adjust for contrast, brightness, levels, color, sharpening, etc. (As Fred surely does his own images, and he surely wants us to buy his software!). I've observed that the forum seems to be self-governing. People let you know immediately if you've broken the rule for size (640 pixels), but nobody complained when the first HDR image appeared; in fact, it won! I was pretty shocked since I was a proponent of camera skills-- and HDR is impossible without software skills or filters that do it for you. Then montage entries bordering on very skillful digital art appeared and became finalists. So, this then is the digital darkroom era. How much is too much? I don't know. I guess its up to the individual to interpret the "highlight your photographic skills" part themselves, and then if anyone is upset with it they should say so... but from what I've seen the majority don't interpret the rule as strictly as you have, and they care the most about how the end product looks. As someone once said, the only level playing field would be to make everyone use the same FILM camera and send the shots to the same lab (bypassing any digital manipulation). That isn't going to happen. I've enjoyed the forum more once I accepted that digital manipulation is a fact of life with digital cameras. Until then, I silently wondered why the software loving folks didn't go play in a Photoshop forum? :-)
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