I must say that I'm enjoying this discussion because this is such a difficult issue to deal with. Each person's perception is different from every other person's perception as has been noted. (I sure hope that I didn't come across as defensive - I sure didn't mean to and wasn't feeling that way). To me, much of what I see posted on Stormtrack and elsewhere, including Ryan's final photo, is more processed than what I likely would have done if I was going for a realistic portrayal of the storm since I doubt that I would have seen the actual event in that way (perceptions do differ but I wasn't there, of course) The trend does seem to be to photoshop the *&#&(* out of storm photos and Susan's photos show that unprocessed photos can be and are extremely powerful.
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I totally agree with you on this -- it's definately possible to get great photos without post processing. (It's called "shooting slides and projecting it on a wall"... and to make it work, you need an armada of filters, i.e.,
preprocessing!. Even then, what kind of slide you choose has a big effect (preprocessing again) on final rendition -- Velvia and Provia are miles apart!) I guess what's important is that those who don't process their photos at all don't get too smug about it; if anything, they're skipping a step that, since the inception of photography, has been considered mandatory. Actually, they're usually not skipping it, so much as letting the local photo lab do it or letting their camera do it (unless, of course, you're shooting slides, though the moment you make a print of it or bring it into the digital realm and post it online... guess what? It's been processed.) I met a dude a couple years ago in Denver at an art fair who studied as a youth under Ansel Adams. This guy shot B&W large format landscapes and printed them 8 or 9 feet tall. It took him, on average, a MONTH to process ONE PRINT. He masked and dodged and burned and used the zone system, and he did it in quadrants with great precision. Could he take a good picture without post processing? Probably -- but that wasn't good enough for him. His big stuff was selling for $25,000 a print.
Folks, Photoshop is no different. I've got no problem with people who think that I or others process too violently (though I'd disagree with them when it comes to me.) The point that Darren & I & Mike & Mike have been trying to hammer home is that post-processing is very much a part of photography and has been for the last century. Unless you're shooting only slides and not printing them or scanning them to put them online, you too are post-processing. Most people don't realize it, because they don't understand what happens at their local Walgreens or Walmart or whereever they drop their film off at -- or, if they're shooting digital, they don't understand what goes on inside of their cameras when the RAW data is converted on the fly to JPEG.
Ultimately, I think it's a red herring to be concerned about the tools that people use to create their images. Tools will change. What's important is intent and how well the artist/journalist executes that intent. IMO.
