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The other day, I was checking through the photograpy section of my local Barnes and Noble, and came upon a book with a name something like Digital Fine Art Landscape Photography (the actual name and author of the book are irrelevant, so I won't bother finding the exact information; henceforth, it will only be known as "the book"). Now, first of all, I must admit that any photography book other than a "basics" manual with the word "Digital" in the title makes me either laugh or cringe a little, because, other than a few technical issues that can be quickly picked up, there are no differences between digital and regular film photography in the essentials of composition, exposure, or even deciding what to photograph. I mean, what additional techniques are you going to find in a book on Digital Nude Photography? (Don't ask...!)
But, if there isn't much difference between image capture with a digital versus a film camera, it's a far different matter when you come to post-processing. There are a number of decent books on, say, how to use Photoshop to improve your images in general; what I would love to see would be a book by a top nature photographer such as Tim Fitzharris or Marc Adamus devoted entirely to how they use post-processing to enhance their photos. Unfortunately, the book in question was not that sort of volume.
Instead, the book served as a guide, and a not-so-subtle plug, to how to use various Photoshop plug-ins from companies like Nik and Alien Skin to change your pictures in post processing. This ranged from subtle (manipulating Photoshop curves and using plug-ins to emulate a given film stock) to heavy-handed (such as imposing a "fog filter" or selectively blurring areas of the photo to make others stand out in sharper contrast). As I was looking at the book, I couldn't help feeling that, although some of the results looked like interesting "photo art," I would have a hard time calling practically any of it good nature photography.
But, am I being a hypocrite complaining about other people's manipulations? After all, I scarcely leave my photographs untouched in post-processing. I have often agitated for the need to boost color saturation in many photos, in order to recapture the adrenaline-fueled emotion you may have felt upon first viewing the scene. And I'm not averse to working with Photoshop curves or adjustment layers to get the result I seek. Am I just as guilty of manipulation as the photographer/artist whose book I was reading?
After some consideration, I would have to say "no," and here's why: while I may not shy away from post-processing, what I do relates to the data that was there, pixels that were created at the moment of capture. They may be modifed in level, say, but it's still the same data in relation to all the other data that surrounds it. On the other hand, use of techniques detailed in that book throws out that data and replaces it with something completely different. Adding an artificial fog, or cutting out a disappointing sky from one image and replacing it with one taken at a different time and place (something I tried early on, and decided I didn't like) doesn't simply fine-tune the original data to better bring out what was already there; instead, it creates a new "there" there. And I don't think I'm splitting hairs when I say that this makes all the difference in the world.
(I must admit to one crucial departure from these principles -- using healing or clone brushes to remove distracting information such as an ill-placed road sign or tourist from the background of an image. Here, I'm skating a bit close to the edge in terms of actually changing the data. But my only excuse is that the same sort of thing was routinely done by film photograpers re-touching or "spotting" their prints with ink and brush. Using Photoshop makes the whole procedure much easier, of course, but it doesn't change the overall technique, which only works on very small sections of the image; if you had an old-time photograher retouching half of his or her image, you'd call them an artist who uses photography as part of their medium, but I doubt many people of the time would call that medium pure landscape photography.)
Now, I'm not telling anyone else how to process their images. And I can see how heavily-processed images may well be "art" every bit as much as an old silver print by Edward Weston. But while it may be art, is it the branch of art known as landscape or nature photography? Obviously, the author of the book has one answer. But, for me, the moment where I make it a habit to regularly add features and data that weren't there at the time of capture, in order to make it a more interesting image, is the moment I stop referring to myself as a nature photographer.