The Importance of Editing

I know there are some "purists" (see "snobs") out there who refuse to do any post-processing on their work, claiming that any editing ruins what the scene really looked like, or is dishonest about portraying the photo, or any other number of pretentious reasons. Today I went to the zoo, and after editing one of my "keepers," it really drove home the point that editing can have a HUGE impact on the quality of a photo.

This isn't to say I support over-editing. There's definitely a line, and all too many people cross it. But those purists would have ended up with a shot looking like this, even if they were using regular (daylight balanced) film:





click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 300mm
Monopod


Granted, it's not too bad of a shot. But the evidently fluorescent bulbs used to light the habitat gave off a pretty greenish tint which was very apparent with the white-balance set to "daylight." Also, because it was a moving subject and I didn't have time to make EV adjustments between shots, I underexposed by a bit.


Between fixing those things and other regular optimizations I do to every photo in Lightroom, I ended up with this:





click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 300mm
Monopod


It's just a better photo now, thanks to regular editing techniques. Now for this photo, I actually took it a step further and cast the whole thing in a strong monochrome blue with added contrast to make it really punchy.




click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 300mm
Monopod


In this case, I think this more extreme treatment works for the photo. However, it's somewhere on the line of "too much post-processing." I'm okay with that as I have a "regular" version to call the photo. This isn't so much a photo as a creative manipulation of a photo. I wouldn't say either of the two images is "better," they're just different.

Feel free to share your own thoughts on post-processing in the comments.

Also, for those of you who noticed/cared, I did switch the links on the images back to a large version of the photo rather than a full-res version. If you want to view the full-res version, just go to it via my Flickr link.