I agree. For me a good threshold of "suitability" for the Photography gallery is this: Could it also be done in the darkroom?

Contrasting should be allowed. Find any professional photographer (even the big names) and chances are that their finished prints will look quite different from the images on their contact sheet, having undergone selective contrasting to bring out the tonal range. In some lighting conditions (whether natural or artificial) it is just not possible to exact the full range of tones in a shot, and many famous photographs have undergone such "postwork" in the darkroom - no one would dream of calling their creators "not true photographers".

Tinting... again, this has been done for years and years. I remember at art college there was a chemical you could buy to turn your black and white prints into sepia tones. I'm not "clued up" enough to know much about these things but as far as I'm aware shots can be tinted in any number of ways in the darkroom.

Touch-ups... remember the good old airbrush? It's now over a century old, having been invented in the early 1890s. While it's been done to death at times (particularly in the 1950s and round about that period) generally photographs have not been considered "no longer photographs" if they've had corrections (particularly for spots, skin blemishes and other flaws). Really this stuff should be kept tasteful and minor and shouldn't detract far from the source.

But when things are manipulated beyond what can be done in the darkroom... really, why not just post in the 2D gallery? When 3D elements are involved, then okay, Mixed Media. I guess there are a few people out there who can do unbelievable things in the darkroom without ever going near Photoshop (check out J.K.Potter for example) but really, this sort of thing is pretty exceptional and is another form of illustration. For the purposes of keeping confusion minimal, I do think postworking should be minimal for Photography gallery pieces.

As for stock photography, I agree with Cass above, definitely not! People's uploads in the Photography gallery should be their own ;-)

2 pence from me, seeing as I'm English LOL ;-) Message edited on: 10/26/2004 13:07