Not too long ago I was a wildlife photographer and the one golden rule was …it must be real…  There must be no faking – colour balance and saturation were about the only things you could change.  As I progressed I started to realise that this was in the end totally defeating because you can never really answer the question of what is real.

Of course in the world of photoshop things can be moved around very easily in an image and wildlife photography is meant be capturing the real world os placing a creature in the image that just wasn’t there is a bit naughty – but what if you acknowledge the fact that an image has been manipulated what then?

One of my favourite wild life photographers is Nick Brandt  yet all of his images are manipulated and don’t really reflect reality if you had stood where Brandt had stood to capture the image.  For a start they are in black and white – possibly the biggest manipulation from reality you can get unless you suffer from some form of  vision impairment.

I honestly don’t know this rambling blog is going other than to say reality is not all it is cracked up to be when creating an image.  All artists distort reality to their own vision and I think that I am so much happier not longer sticking to the rules….it is also a lot lot cheaper!