About Hello Kitty, the Eyes on You photo contest winner . . .

[ManiacJoe]

53. Loving this conversation!

Coming in late to the party....

Photography exists on a sliding scale:
documentation/journalism --- photo as art --- art that started as a photo

All positions on the scale are valid as long as the "photo" is correctly labeled. The vast majority of photos seen by the public are in the "photo as art" range.

Documentation/journalism is the only position that severely limits the edits for obvious reasons. Art being passed off as journalism gets photographers fired and gets big apologies from the media when found.

Photo contests usually have a set of rules governing the allowed edits, written or unwritten. Those are the conditions of entry. In the case of the DU contests, sometimes there are written rules for the individual contest, but usually not. The usual assumption is that the edits will be light-handed, but we all know the problem with assumptions.

I did not see nor vote in this particular contest. Here are my thoughts based on examples in this thread.

For the kitten photo, my personal preference is to not have the smile and enlarged eyes since they are not realistic. All the other edits regarding color/brightness/object-removal seem perfectly fine.

If the contest rules did not prohibit the controversial edits, then I am fine with them being there. However, because of them, I would not have voted for that photo based on my personal preferences.

The woodpecker is a great conversational piece for this thread. From the artistic perspective and the technical skills, the compositing of the new background was very well done. Does it fit the rules of the contest? Depends on the stated rules of the contest. It would probably go against some unwritten assumptions, but that is the problem with assumptions. Given how natural it looks, I would have no problem voting for it in a contest that does not prohibit it.

Love the conversation of this thread!