I love great photography. While in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago, I got the chance to see some great photography at their museum. I also got to see a half dozen shots at the Rio Grande Nature Center by one my favorite photographers, Laura Gilpin. The work that she, Eliot Porter and Ansel Adams could do in a day and age without photoshop is amazing. I do not like altering my photographs because then I am afraid that I will become a lazy photographer and not get better because I can fix my problems later using software. Keep in mind that I do not mind people altering their photos, but I am just an amateur with a photography hobby and as such do not want to alter my pictures (although most of them would look much better). If I was selling pictures, then I'd definitely be altering them.
(I mentioned Eliot Porter because he is one of my favorite photographers, although I debated about including him. He started taking color photographs in the late 30s, and he loved using the dye transfer process of printing his photographs. I do not know a lot about his personal developing, but I do understand that you could tweak your colors quite a bit and get an incredible richness using the dye transfer process. You really should check out his Glen Canyon pictures by going here. They really look better in person.)
I obviously altered this one (well, duh), but I wanted to see what this picture would look like. This literally took 30 seconds because all I did was desaturate all of the colors except for blue. I'll put up the original tomorrow (and try to always let you know when I put up an altered picture).
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