> I think the difference would be between photography as a means of recording images accurately (for historical purposes or whatnot) and photography as an art. Photographers as artists may be assigned the task of creating a thing of beauty out a person or a scene that is not necessarily itself perfectly beautiful; retouching the photograph is another tool among many used to make that vision a reality. And before anybody pooh-poohs too much about the realism being critical to art, bear in mind that the portaits created by classical painters generally present their subjects as more perfectly beautiful than they necessarily were. So the art of retouching has been with us for many years; it just goes by a new name. ;-)

More than any art, photography (and its nephew cinematography) brings to light the fact that reality doesn't have a single, objective look. Camera lenses are distinctly different than human eyes and so even before any darkroom work is done, digital or otherwise, captured images look different from how you would have seen the scene had you been standing where the photographer was.

If I use a wide-angle lens to take a shot of a close subject, the subject looks distorted. If I use a wide focal length and aperture setting, the entire frame is in focus and the sense of depth will be completely thrown off.

It's worth considering that these techniques are not changing anything. The camera is only collecting light that exists; by manipulating the camera we can choose what light we want to capture. These images, though distinctly different than what our eyes would capture, are just as real and accurate as what we would see normally.

Digital manipulation is different because you can add things that were not present in the original scene, but I think it's important to keep in the mind the above when attacking manipulation for diluting the reality of photographs.

Stephen