I am not a journalist, so don’t expect my images to follow that model. Traditionally, journalists have a strict and rigorous duty to present their images exactly as they are taken. “Photoshopping” is a dirty word in the journalist’s world. There are plenty of famous instances where even very modest alteration of images cause a journalistic scandal. On the other hand, in the artistic, commercial, portraiture, or fashion world, alterations and retouching (sometimes dramatic) are very much the norm — accepted (even expected) on virtually any and every image. Since I’m not making a living on any of this, and my work doesn’t fall obviously into any of those realms, I’ve got to set my own rules.

I unabashedly use Photoshop, and necessarily make lots of changes to my images. Certainly I crop my images (some photographers won’t), and I adjust lighting and color balance, often in partial sections of an image that are otherwise too dark/light/etc. And if an ugly white car has pulled into the middle of an otherwise picturesque scene, expect me to make that disappear if my Photoshop skills will allow. If distracting pieces of trash clutter an image, I’ll clean those up in the computer — unless of course it seems especially relevant to know and show whether the place has bits of trash on the ground.

My goal — my “ideology,” if you will — is that these edits let me show the viewer the scene as I saw it — as it looked to me, and as I remember it. I want you to see and experience what I experienced. In person, we usually look past an ugly car or telephone line and see the beautiful scene behind it. It’s not the ugly, distracting things that we remember. I don’t try to fabricate a scene that didn’t really exist — no pasted-in sunsets or non-realistic lighting and colors. But if a live scene seems awesome and beautiful, I want my image to give you the same experience — even if my on-scene photography work wasn’t perfect and even if my original image needs some tweaking. I think that’s what most viewers want to see, and it’s what I want to show. And f a scene sends visitors home with a somewhat idealized, slightly-better-than-life feeling, I want to capture and present that feeling. Apologies to anyone who prefers a different approach.