IDK why this has recently caught my eye, but I've been looking more and more into how people that shoot stills for magazines and have found that they use more digital manipulation that true photography. Maybe its because I learned on an all manual SLR with B&W in the darkroom and had to develop everything myself, so when I see people just casually drop in a new sky, or light all the different parts of the car and chop them all together in different layers, I don't see it as proper photography. In the darkroom you could drop in a new sky but it took hours and a lot of tries to get the right dodging and burning to make it look seamless as well as exposing both negatives on the enlarger with the proper ratio to get the tones and contrast correct.

Now thats not to say that I won't do this kind of shooting, but I feel like when you look at ads today for cars, and its all PP I feel like the customer is getting a "better than real life" interpretation of the object. I've recently found a program that you can do rolling shots from a single still shot and drop in the car after you blur the background properly. I feel like all this digital ability only makes the photography less of a factor and its more how Photoshop/computer savvy you are.

I do love the shots that come from all this digital manipulation, but i feel like its wrong to shoot something and them go back and drop in a new sky, layer different parts of the car for the proper lighting etc and call it photography.

/rant

So whats your opinion? I know a few of you do this sort of stuff, and I'd love to hear your take. I'm not here to say your wrong in the way you shoot or edit, but I want to know what your opinion on the two words/phrases are.