Are Digitally Altered Photos Photography or Art?

If you're old enough, you may remember pictures from a camera with a roll of film, not a computer chip, or a Polaroid Instaprints printed as we wait right before our eyes.  As early as our parents or grandparent's lifetime, television has changed.  Do you remember televisions with only local channels on them showing black and white shows such as Ozzie & Harriett, I Love Lucy or I Spy?  Even shows that welcomed color like the Brady Bunch or the Monkees are now a products of another generation.  Do these changes mean that the original was more pure or simply that change has occured?

Nowadays, there are digital cameras that are tough enough for even a child to use, take a digital photo, download it to the computer and change the image any way they see fit using countless numbers of photo-editing software available which are basically simple to use.  When film was making its transition from large format black & white, to 110, to 35mm color film into the computer age, it was much argued that these digitally-altered images were not true photography.  While there are still a fair number of die-hard film photographer purists out there to be found, digital photography and all its alterations have since been welcomed into the marketplace in recent years.  Did this make photography obsolete?  No!  It just changed the art form.

Similarly, television shows of the 1950’s, made a slow move and transition into shows of today.  It used to be whatever was offered on television was watched by millions of people all at the same time because that’s when it aired.  If you missed the show when it aired, you missed it.  There were no VCRs or Tivos or Digital recorders.  And, there were few choices as to what to watch.  Nowadays, there are thousands of television channels blasting out the airwaves at every minute and every second of the day from cable and satellite, now digital cable & satellite and televisions with converter boxes.  Did this make the art of television shows obsolete?  No!  It just changed the art form.

But is digital photography that has been edited a true photograph or is it an art form that has changed with the times?  Surely, if you look hard enough, you will be able to find someone who will argue that true photographs are those that capture the "real" image.  It is not something that should be tampered with or altered in any way.  At the same time, there are photographer lovers who like to see a quality photo.  If this means altering it, so be it as long as you remain intact the basic original subject matter.  It's a hard transition for traditional photographers of the film age.  But, there are benefits to photo-editing softwares.  One benefit is that the photographer can change the exposures, lighting and other factors which may have been the original desire, but in an effort to capture a shot quickly, the aperature setting or exposure was not as good as had been hoped.  By altering the photograph in this manner digitally, you are not taking away any originality or purity from the photo.  You are simply changing what you probably would have changed to begin with had you had the time or a different setting.  Digital editing makes it possible for the purist photographer to take a picture and then continue taking it in the sense that right before their very eyes, the picture changes on the screen immediately - no waiting for development to process.  No messy trays full of solutions to dip photographic paper into.  There are many other benefits of digital editing as well.  Most die-hard pure photographers will agree so long as the subject matter is not changed entirely beyond recognition.  While others will argue, that altering the photo to become a completely different image is really art at its best!