When nature lets you down...

Bob, a great friend of mine, wanted a photo of the fireflies around his cabin. He's not planning on being here forever and wants something to take with him that will remind him of the hazy, bug filled evenings of Tennessee. We picked an evening a couple of weeks ago to try to capture the little buggers. It was hot. It was buggy (I have the bites to prove it). It even had the fireflies we were looking for.

Unfortunately, they KNEW we were their to photograph them and they ended up getting camera shy. We shot and shot and never got more than one or two in a shot. When nature lets you down, that's where technology comes in. The image above is a complete digital manipulation. Of the fireflies you see in the image, only three on the far right were actually there. The rest are all cut, moved, stretched, flipped and generally pulled from other shots we took.

This is all a perfect setup for the HUGE ethical gray area that is digital manipulation. That image is a good representation of what Bob sees on a regular basis. Heck, *I* saw things that looked like that while I was there. But that image never happened. It's a fabrication. It's a lie. It is not a documentation... But it's accurate to his memory. None of that really matters for this image, but what about photojournalism? Don't think that happens? Here's a story about a Reuter's photographer you may remember from a couple of years ago. That photographer was only caught because of the heavy handed, poor nature of his changes. National Geographic recently had to admit that many of their photos had been significantly altered for publication. Thousands of photo's are "tweaked" every day and published without hesitation. Is there any level of acceptable changes? Where do we draw the line? How do we confirm that what we're seeing isn't faked? Welcome to the debate.