When I first began my migration from analog to digital, I was plagued by the dilemma of whether to use Photoshop or not to enhance my images.  I felt that if I used Photoshop, than I wasn’t being true to the art form.  What would Ansel Adams do?   He would stick to the old ways of artistic expression and not adopt digital as his new medium.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  I found some quotes by Ansel but the one that rang the most appropriate is below:

“Photographers are, in a sense, composers and the negatives are their scores. …In the electronic age, I am sure that scanning techniques will be developed to achieve prints of extraordinary subtlety from the original negative scores.  If I could return in twenty years or so I would hope to see astounding interpretations of my most expressive images. It is true no one could print my negatives as I did, but they might well get more out of them by electronic means. Image quality is not the product of a machine, but of the person who directs the machine, and there are no limits to imagination and expression.” - Ansel Adams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZND3eczqoIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWhQGU2RYuM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7b6bH1gmmk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGPsLx8aL8k&feature=related

It is clearly obvious that Ansel would have wanted us to use these new technologies, not only on our own work, but his as well.  So if someone says that you are cheating, faking or not being a purist for using some of the new software, just know that the greatest photographer of all times was on your side.

But don’t take this as a sign to get lazy with your work, still strive for perfection in your original image, but when the ideal you envisioned is just not there, use what’s at hand.  Take the image below.  I am in Afghanistan, at the time of this writing, and it is dull, dry and grey, everywhere, not an interesting image in site.  So what did I do?  I used the tools at hand to create the following image.