>> An artificial confection of something that was never there in nature is not what
>> attracts me to photography.

Any digital camera will give you exactly that unless you use RAW format. If your digital camera takes JPGs it processes them using software. But then you have to process the RAW file somehow .... you cant win.

For that matter no photograph developed without tweaks will give you something that is there in nature. As you know each brand of film captures light differently.

Playing with depth of field gives you something you'll never see with your eyes.

If you read what Morfe actually wrote you'll see he does so much work to try and get the image as close to what he could remember from being there. That wouldn't be the same as what you or I would have seen if we'd have been standing next to him when he took it.

Photographs are lies - no matter who takes them.

The difference is whose lies they are. Are they the lies of the camera software? The lies of the chemicals in the film? The carefully crafted lies created intentionally by someone in the [digital] darkroom?

"I do know what I'm talking about. I just do not like to manipulate the truth of the image too much. You do, but I don't."

You prove my point again that (tregarding my work) you don't know what you are talking about. I just gave you a total breakdown of my workflow and you call it 'manipulating the truth of the image'?

Are you mad?

I take three consecutive shots, stick em together and correct the sky exposure to what it was when i took the pic. (Still waiting for you to provide the 'purist' method to expose for sky and ground without a filter, belive me I'd pay you)

Now I suspect you are up to your old snide games again but I beg you to point out where that is 'manipulation'

Before you ask me why I don't follow the professionals and use a 'wide angle lens' instead of 'manipulating the image' you ight want to think about the fact that wide angle makes things far away and distorted, nothing like the original human viewpoint'

I choose 50mm lens initially because it is a good discipline to frame without a zoom, and 50mm is the nearest approximation to the human eye's view. All my work was single frame 50mm stuff until I wanted a wider view, so I simply take three (or six) shots instead of one and rejoin them all together on the PC.

How is *that* more manipulation than a wide-angle lens that actually distorts the true view?

Pease be man enough to answer that before getting your big old broad (insulting) brush out again.