(no subject)

[winterbadger]

The Nature Conservancy's best nature photos of 2009

There are some very lovely photos there but, sadly, the prevalence of photo enhancement software has made me very skeptical of certain types of photos. Ones like the first runner up, the one of Mt Ranier, and some others looked fake to me, like the photographer has taken a genuine photo and tarted it up with computer enhancements. Maybe they didn't, but they look unreal to me, and knowing that people *can* fake up photos electronically that way makes it hard for me to credit that they really got shots like that legitimately.

Comments

[wolfette]

the first runner up photo looks to be treated with HDR - High Dynamic something or other. A good HDR photo should't look "fake" - it should look as the real thing would look to the eye, by emphasising the dynamic range that a camera often loses. By that standard, that is NOT a "good" HDR, though it may be a lovely picture.

However the EXIF information attached to any digital photo will reveal if it's been tricked up, so the judges would have known.