Photographic Ethics and my Photographic Philosophy

Field Ethics

As much as possible, I approach animals in a natural setting; my subjects are fully wild and unrestrained, unless labeled otherwise. I always try to minimize disturbance to the plants and animals I photograph, as well as any others I may encounter while making an image. I love the feeling I get when I approach a wild bird, take intimate portraits and document its natural behaviors, then slip away without ever disturbing the animal. This sometimes requires special equipment, such as a blind, and other times simply requires a lot of patience. The rewards for such encounters always make the effort worthwhile. I occasionally take pictures of captive animals and cultivated plants; these images will always be labeled as such.

Digital Manipulation

Digital photography has changed the way I think about post-capture manipulation. A certain amount of tweaking and massaging is necessary to bring the most out of any digital image. I wouldn't call myself a "purist" per se, because I am willing to take advantage of many tools available to the digital photographer. That being said, there are some manipulations I do, and others I do not.

Dust-spotting: A problem inherent in the digital medium is dust accumulation on the image sensor. In the film days, you got a fresh "image sensor" (i.e. piece of film) with every shot, and you didn't have to worry too much about dust accumulating on the film from one shot to the next. A necessary part of post-processing is removing dust specks that have accumulated on the CCD, CMOS, or whatever sensor the camera uses.

Color, contrast, and saturation adjustment: Here is one of the great advantages of shooting digitally. Especially when shooting RAW formats, the photographer has a great deal of control over how to interpret images straight out of the camera. In the realm of nature photography, I try to use these adjustments to make the image on my monitor match the image I saw in my viewfinder when I tripped the shutter. For me, a "match" does not necessarily mean it looks exactly the same as it did through the lens, rather that it invokes the same feeling. Film photographers make similar choices through their selection of particular films, but digital photography allows the artist to make these adjustments on a shot-by-shot basis.

Cropping: I think cropping is one of the nicest features of the digital workflow. Cropping a digital image is easy, and even subtle changes in composition can often increase the visual impact of an image dramatically. Photoshop also makes it simple to level an image during cropping, enabling the user to salvage a hastily-composed image taken in a fast action situation. I usually stick to a 2:3 crop when I crop digital images, because I find the 2:3 aspect ratio pleasing and natural. I will occasionally use different aspect ratios as well, and sometimes these can create entirely new compositions with a very different look and feeling.

Sharpening: Sharpening is another valuable tool for digital shooters. Sharpening cannot turn a soft image into a sharp one. But a photographer can use it to make his images look optimally sharp at any output size. For me, sharpening is a totally acceptable form of digital manipulation. The process starts with only the original data captured by the camera, then optimizes that data for certain types of display (e.g. optimal sharpening for printing is very different than optimal sharpening for web display). It is easy to tell when a soft photograph has been sharpened digitally to the point of looking "sharp," so sharpening is a pretty honest form of manipulation.

Adding canvas: For most types of photography, this technique is probably unimportant. For birds and other fast-moving subjects, however, it can occasionally be useful, if used judiciously. If I'm photographing a bird in flight against a clear blue sky and it gets ahead of me as I pan the camera to follow it, I will end up with shots that may depict interesting flight behavior, but whose composition will be unsatisfactory. Photoshop allows a skilled user to change the placement of the bird in such a simple composition by adding more of a relatively uniformly-colored background on one side or another. I don't think that this is an inappropriate tool, because the substantive content of the image (i.e. the bird) is not altered. In most cases, the photographer can be sure the end result is what the image would have looked like, had he been a little quicker in the field! I avoid this manipulation when possible, but I use it once in a while to rescue an otherwise unsatisfactory image. When I do, I label the images appropriately.

Red-eye removal: Once in a great while this tool will be useful for bird photography. In most cases, it is simple to solve red-eye problems in the field, but in a few cases (e.g. when shooting owls after dark, with their huge eyes and dilated pupils), virtually any artificial light source will create red-eye problems. In these rare cases, a simple Photoshop fix for red-eye may save a great image from the Recycle Bin. When I use this manipulation, I label the resulting images appropriately.

Cloning and other tools: Photoshop makes it easy to remove distracting elements, such as errant twigs and leaves, from the background and even from in front of the subject. If my objective were to shoot bird photographs for field guides, I might use this technique to tidy up my images. I photograph, however, to portray plants and animals in natural environments, and I think the background is an important part of every image. By removing bits of the natural context of the bird, I think one changes the content of the image, so these are not manipulations I perform. If my views change in the future, I will certainly label manipulated images as such.

Similarly, Photoshop makes it relatively trivial to "reconstruct" bits of the bird that might be cut off by the frame edges, as long as one has a suitable template from which to reconstruct. Wingtips are frequently added to birds in this fashion. This is another manipulation I do not use in my workflow. As with cloning out background or foreground elements, I feel it changes the content of an image.

How it all fits together: My digital philosophy

I haven't described all the digital manipulations used in bird and nature photography, but I have mentioned some of the most common. A few I use, others I do not. I don't intend my own rules to govern any photographers besides myself, and I certainly don't condemn photographers with different digital practices from my own. Digital photography gives us unprecedented creative power for altering our images, and some people harbor concerns that this may undermine the artistic integrity of photography as a medium. I disagree, though my reasoning may be idealistic. I think the vast majority of nature photographers create their images to portray nature, not to create it. I love nature, and I have enough respect for it to keep my images natural. I think most photographers feel the same way.

Photoshop and related products are an important new set of tools for nature photographers. I prefer to use them cautiously and with a priori goals in mind. My ultimate goal is always to communicate the vision I experienced when I captured the image.

I think that full disclosure of the digital techniques used in optimizing an image is a good thing. Photography is art, and art grows when artists share their techniques openly with one another. A good artist does not feel threatened by another artist using his technique; he should be comfortable in the knowledge that, as an artist, he has a unique style all his own, one that cannot be duplicated by technique alone. In the case of published images, it is not practical to outline all the digital manipulations used; there just isn't room. In the case of substantial modifications, however, I think that failure to disclose those changes is a disservice to the viewer. Since many nature photographers shoot in the hope that their photographs will educate others about the natural world, this final point is one that the photographic and editorial communities need to consider very carefully.