I have had a cold for nearly 6 weeks. The sore throat and runny nose ended after a few days but I have a lingering cough that doesn’t want to disappear. So I tried to rest, eat healthy food and give my body time to recover. When that had no effect I went to the doctor and was given some antibiotics and various other tablets. When they had no effect the doctor gave me some different antibiotics and another selection of tablets. I think I just need a good dose of sunshine, as the weather has been miserable for weeks.
Meanwhile, I’ve been sitting at my computer and learning about Photoshop. You can do a lot of amazing things in Photoshop and it is surprisingly easy to manipulate reality.
Original
With Photoshop
As a photographer this raises all sorts of ethical questions about what you should or shouldn’t do to an image. For news photographers the rules are clear, nothing should be changed. For travel photography I think it would be best to do the same. However, it is extremely useful to be aware of just how easily these changes can be made. For example, take an old photograph of the moon and an old photograph of London Bridge and in less than a minute you can combine the two.
Tower Bridge plus a Photoshop moon.
I’ve seen shots like this before and wondered how the photographer achieved it. Clearly I am no Photoshop master – you may have noticed that in my composite image the moon has no reflection – but it has made me wonder just how much “enhancing” has been given to the images we see in magazines.
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 
Haha, I am an unapologetic photoshop (ab)user. I have had many debates with Daniel Lopez about the morality of it but for me the end image always justifies the means. Most of my album artwork is quite obviously fantastical and so in these cases I think there’s less of an issue.
http://tinyurl.com/yegbgj8
Digital photography is from its nature inseperable from softwares. People can enjoy photo shooting and retouching them. Having said that, most of the photos produced in such way are second class photos.
The best way to get a handle on the amount of Photoshop that is used is when it goes wrong, Have a gander at Photoshop disasters (http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/) to see just how much is used in the media!
Yes Photoshop disasters is a good site. Learn from the mistakes of others!
ha ha, great entry, Chris!