tinkered-with image of reflected branches

Cropping a little is one thing, but altering exposure to tweak an image (something I do routinely), I’ll admit is something else again.

And then, the whole business of adding and subtracting elements begins to move from photography to graphics, does it not?

I have fun with the artistic filters, but even I, as expedient and convenience-driven as I am, will admit that a photograph filtered through artistic treatments on Photoshop maybe needs to be viewed as something ‘other’ than a photograph. The image of branches in our bathroom window, above, was so dull that I was going to delete it, but at the last minute decided to fool with it a little in Photoshop (I use Photoshop Elements 3.0).  I DO like it now, but what is it?  How many photographers would reject it for purist reasons? And, if rejected on the basis of post-capture manipulation, what do these same viewers have to say about darkroom manipulations?

In the spirit of the last post about cropping, here are three more pictures that were framed within the camera:

The image of the beech tree I darkened a little and heightened the contrast to make the image a little crisper.  The other two were not modified.  The middle image captures the polarized band of the windshield — the sky was not at all that blue… (and yes, I took it while driving over one of the most hazardous stretches of road in my neighborhood!)