Art?

I subscribe to Outdoor Photographer, and I was appalled one day when I read that it's common to, say, remove a utility pole from a picture submitted to a competition. The author was fine with this and wished for a category of competition that allowed lots of manipulation.

Three years ago I wrote that I don't cotton to enhancing photos in software and that I want to capture reality. Two years ago I wrote that software can fix mistakes, and I do fix mistakes in exposure or white balance (color). I still resist improving my pictures using software, until...

I took this picture of a bald eagle at the Columbus Zoo November 29th:

It's a decent picture, but I thought the white was too bright and washed-out in spots. I could have used a little negative exposure compensation at the time I took the picture, but I didn't expect a problem, and the picture looked okay on the camera. Sooo, even though I don't consider this to be a mistake, I brought the photo into Nikon's Capture NX-D.

-1 stop (exposure value)

I took out 1.0 exposure value (one "stop"), and thought, "That is an interesting picture." The eagle's head looks sharper, I hadn't noticed the blood--if that's what it is--on its beak, and there's more detail in the rat on the left. Hmm.

-2 stops

Interestinger or worse? Still more detail came out of the rats. Some highlights are lost (bright white places that can't be enhanced) in the eagle's head and the left rat, but it doesn't look bad over all. It reminds me of a portrait of some courtier standing in his dark tunic and leggings, holding a sword and pondering an apple, or a lady wearing a powdered wig and dark brocade dress and holding a golden chalice--a lot of dark with a few spots of light. I like it.

Why not continue?

-3 stops

This is too much. The rat's belly practically glows, and the too-white feathers stand out in the bird's head. Select a photo and then click through them to see the differences.

So where does this leave me and my desire to record exactly what I see? From Outdoor Photographer I take it that photographers routinely run "captures" from their cameras through Adobe Lightroom or other software to tweak this or enhance that. I still don't have patience for that, and I can't make a decision, anyway. I tried to decide which of the four eagles to keep and couldn't, let alone decide which part of a photo to sharpen and which color to enhance.

Language affects my attitude. A "capture" is somehow different from a "photo." A photo is a fixed thing, but a capture is a starting point for adjustment and improvement. Some photographers say they "develop" captures, which seems okay, rather than postprocess them, which is not okay. The end result is an "image," not a photograph.

I suppose I try to document an animal rather than produce a piece of art. If a photo turns out to have some artistic value rather than simply being a good picture of an animal, that's fine, but that's not my goal.