Nature photography 104: digital chainsaw (Part 2)

To make a very long story short, I keep finding myself annoyed with nature photography. I was very worked up a few days ago, when I became quite confident that the winner of a fairly large photo contest must have edited/doctored the photo... I then look at said persons website, and found some very blatant editing along with large amounts of shameless self-promotion as a truly expert photographer. 

This really wasn't anything new, but I learned something from it: People can do whatever the heck they want, and I shouldn't care about it. If it bothers me, I can just focus on how I conduct myself and my photography! And with that said, I had the idea to reveal some of the work done on my own photos on my personal website. 

Are you ready for a look at everything you may or may not already know about nature photography? I'll post the website version first, followed by the totally un-edited original,

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Part 2: The digital chainsaw

Birds are not cooperative. Photographing people or buildings is the popular thing to do, but at least there is some sort of understanding as to what they may do. Birds are not cooperative. Here's a look at some of my Snail Kite images: 

http://peregrineprints.com/zz_SNKI.htm

Up first: 

Right away you can see my typical colour work. Although remember I shoot in very neutral settings, so the original is actually pretty dull compared to real life. 

But take a closer look near the bottom left. Just to the right of the green vegetation, you'll notice I removed a blurry stick. It is a very easy thing to do, as I "copy" the blue sky beside it, and simply paste it over top of it (The clone stamp).  Fairly harmless, right? 

Up next:

Oh lordy... Here's where I brought out the digital chainsaw. I cropped a few things out, but obviously went to work on that branch and those in the background. I have slowly gravitated away from this practice, but it is a very common thing in the nature photography community. And once you start, it becomes somewhat addictive, and you tend to continue. (Almost a sense of pride at actually being able to do it, even though you lose track of how much you've changed your first image). 

Next thing you know, you're repairing damage to the primaries (outer flight feathers). Take a close look and you'll notice the brand new look.  Suddenly the fotoshop joke becomes reality with nature photography. 

All thanks to the 'clone stamp' tool. I actually reach a point where I start to forget how much work I've actually done on some pictures, and when I get recalled to the original, it comes with a brief moment of  surprise. Anyways...

Up next:

To try and restore some faith, I'll present some of the other SNKI images with less changes. Here I did the reverse, where you'll notice that i just BARELY managed to get the higher wingtip inside the image, but it was much to tight for comfort. I "added canvas" to the top of the screen and extended the sky above the wing. 

Compared to the above image, it seems quite harmless -- where I didn't actually change any major part of the bird or its habitat. I just helped fix some of the unfortunate side effects of trying to photograph fast moving birds. 

Yet as I've learned, everyone has a different set of "values" on what is good or isn't, so I decided to showcase  all of the changes by posting the originals alongside the final product! The digital chainsaw has been seeing less use in my photography over the last few years, but is rarely disclosed. Many feel that this dramatically alters the "natural history" of the image, and they question what the point of taking these pictures of "wild" birds is, if such dramatic changes will be made afterwards? 

I'm not likely to change any of my practices, but I would be very curious to hear what you think about the editing I've done. Good/bad/immediate reaction, annoyed? etc...