A thousand lies

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A photograph is worth a thousand words, but photoshop can produce a thousand lies. Life is much more beautiful to me when looking through the camera lens. To me, photography is not what I see, it is what I let others see. It’s the beauty of life, captured in a single image. Call me a purist, but other than the occasional black-and-white photograph, I don’t edit any of my photographs. I don’t like taking a beautiful picture of a landscape and then photoshopping it until it looks like a cartoon.

Why do we use so many filters on pictures anyway? Flipping through my Instagram feed some shots certainly have interesting colour patterns, but have very little to do with reality anymore. I’ve even seen that done with nature pictures being stitched together from over 20 different overlays and exposures. The result was nice and visually appealing, but I couldn’t help but wonder if someone who had never seen the true beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains would be disappointed in reality after seeing this heavily edited photograph. It’s all lies.

I use the same reasoning for my photographic art as well as photo shoots. If athletes can’t use steroids, why can models use photoshop? Admitted, for some commercial work photoshop is needed but that requires a graphic designer, not a photographer. So I don’t edit, I make photographs while I take them. Capturing life as I see it. Period. Call me a purist.

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