Yes, i'm a keen photographer as well lol. No idea if i'm a good photographer or not, but have always loved the media. I started at school in the early 1970's and have been at it ever since. I have read this thread all the way way through and will add my 2p worth. I spent most of my early years taking pics and developing and printing my own. Because of cost, it was B&W. In the darkroom we always manipulated prints, dodging and burning being the usual tricks. In the 1980's I could afford and bought a Durst colour enlarger complete with colour analyser for about £800. Of course the drums, chemicals and paper were on top of that. We used loads of different methods of getting the result we wanted. All of them involved lots of time and lots of failures which of course cost money. So to you peeps that say you don't do any post processing because you don't need to............................bollocks. Post processing has ALWAYS happened. It's just in the past it happened in the darkroom and not on the computer. I bought my first digital camera in 2001 and would not go back to film except in one media, slide film. Now days, for the under tenner a month you can get the best software in the world for "developing" your pics (i used to spend twice that amount a week in printing paper alone). These pics were taken at the Black Country museum last year, not spectacular, but they would have been rubbish if they had not been worked on in Lightroom. The light was rubbish, no flash was used.
Quite a few posts back people discussed touching up and altering photos there were for and against. I don't do it but its only art. Artists paint a scene but often put things in that are not there or remove things that are there to get what they think is a balanced and beautiful painting. Doing the same to a photograph is no different. A couple of my photos
Ooooh, someone's started on the 'plane pictures..... 2 more from 2014, no editing/manipulation after shot taken. Should stop posting to let others get on with it but couldn't help myself as the 2 Lancasters were the highlight of the year (saw them 3 times)!
So the debate on post rages on. As @Diver pointed out way back even in the days of film there was some latitude in post, exposure, color cast, cropping, cutting & dodging etc: albeit a lot more limited. Even Ansel Adams used darkroom manipulation on his shots, probably his most famous "Moonrise Over Hernandez" requires darkroom manipulation. In the days of digital I just don't see the point of not post processing. You're efectively post processing by looking at the shot after you took it anyway, because then you correct camera levels based on that first shot. To me that's post processing too. So again just rushing out to take a picture of the local and a smidgen post processing Original 5 mins in post
Another 2 taken just around the corner & yes shamelessly manipulated using the tools of Satan I know I'm rubbish but I'm having fun
