what is a "fake" photo?

I’m often asked if I edit my images—there seems to be some disagreement about what “Real” and “Fake” in the world of photography is—and that’s understandable! With Generative AI swooping into the mainstream seemingly overnight, we now live in a world where “photographs” can be created by Artificial Intelligence, based on or without human prompts. It certainly makes things confusing, as the title of a recent article in Wired declared “Photography is no Longer Evidence of Anything.”

The short answer to these inquiries is “Yes”, as a fine art photographer I have a post-production workflow process just like most, if not all, passionate photographers. When I pack up my camera bag and leave a location, the work has just started for me. What I think most people are trying to figure out is more akin to “Am I being lied to here?”

Fair question. I am of the school of thought that Photography is a form of communication: “photo” means “light” and “graph” means “write.” We write with light. And just as with any form of communication, there is the possibility of a lie, or a lie by omission. Now with Artificial Intelligence readily available, and a broad spectrum of editing software and filters, integrity lies within the photographer’s intent, or purpose in creating and sharing the image.

Let’s say we divide serious photographers into three general categories: The Documentarian, the Artisan, and the Artist. Each of these distinct categories uses photography to attain a different goal; each is trying to communicate with their audience (or, clients) in a different way.

The Documentarian is taking photos in order to share with his audience, more or less, what they SAW, what was THERE or what HAPPENED. Think of a journalist, for example. This form of photography should, for all intents and purposes, use the least amount of editing, almost no manipulation, right? For example, a journalist using AI Generative Fill to show a 100% computer-generated scene, and attempting pass it off as reality in a news story is lying, right? Now, that’s fake. We might as well be talking about faking the Moon landing here. Obviously, this is only cool one day a year, at the beginning of April.

Several internet resources have been circulating the picture below, which conveniently even has the Milky Way Galaxy squeezed between the Earth and the Eclipse, as a genuine photo of the recent Solar Eclipse on 4/8/2024. There’s several giveaways that it isn’t, and when I researched where the image came from, to at least give its creator credit, I found it attributed to the past several Solar Eclipses! This is an example of someone, in this case on social media SEVERAL people/groups, taking their assumed role of documentarian and doing just the opposite—lying.

Digital Art passed along as a real representation of the April 8, 2024 Solar Eclipse...and the three previous Solar Eclipses. (Artist Unknown)

The Artisan is taking photos on a “gig” basis, generally, I’m thinking of a portrait photographer or the like, who is making a product that utilizes their creativity to some degree. We generally expect a portrait photographer to do some touching-up of photos, right? We all want to look our best, especially when we’re PAYING someone to take our picture!

Finally, we have The Artist, who is using their photography in order to make their audience FEEL something, something implied by the photo but maybe not explicitly displayed within it. It’s acceptable for a fine art landscape photographer to similarly “touch-up” their photos (many high-level photographers refer to finished works as “edits” as opposed to “images”,) in order to pursue their artistic vision—it’s expected: but where is the line?

Since each of these roles has a different end goal, each is tied to a different expected end result, and this is, generally, tied to the amount and type of post-processing used.

Where does “diligent artistic craftsmanship” turn into “cheating?”  The underlying principle here is the photographer should strive to maintain an honest connection with their audience. It is incumbent upon all photographers to put up their own guardrails and take an honest assessment of what the image’s purpose is. While sharing a photo with a funny AI background, or a filter on the subject’s face might be fun to share with friends, using similar technology in a photo contest would be highly unethical. In fact, more and more photo contests are requiring entrants to submit their RAW files, along with their entry, to check for AI-generated content. For a nuanced dive into the role that AI plays in modern digital photography, I highly encourage everyone to check out Colorado Landscape Photographer Matt Payne’s podcast episode here, where Matt and his guests dive into this topic in-depth.

Where that line gets drawn, then, is a function of both the image’s purpose and the degree of manipulation the photographer uses both on-location and in post-production. That’s right: not all manipulation is done after the shot is taken: a lot starts before the shutter is even clicked! By then, a composition has been chosen. This includes choosing a subject, leaving certain elements out, and determining the spatial relationships of the image’s elements. Is something that the photographer intentionally omitted, just out-of-frame, worthy of being considered a way of manipulating a photo? White balance has been selected, for example, which dictates the entire color gamut of the image. If it looks different from when the photographer was on-location, is that artistic flare or are some people going to call that “fake” or “cheating”, as well? The choice of medium the image is recorded as, RAW versus JPG from a digital camera’s sensor versus Film, has been made and will drastically affect the image. A particular lens/focal length has been selected: the distortions and angles within the image determine how the final image looks. Is making a small object in the foreground of the frame appear large by using a wide-angle lens up-close a creative way of shooting the scene, or is it “cheating” to intentionally distort the proportions of objects in-frame?  The selected shutter speed will affect how motion occurring in the frame is depicted (blurred versus frozen.) The aperture will affect all kinds of things in the frame, most notably the depth-of-focus. The timing of when the image is to be taken also affects the overall lighting, and possibly whether there are other people in the frame. Essentially, everything the photographer does before, during and after taking a picture is manipulate certain elements of the image to suit their purpose.

While the aforementioned decisions affect the overall result, but we don’t call them “cheating” or “fake” or “Photoshopping.”

We call this “taking a picture.”

Clearly, my on-location approach of how to present the surroundings has involved some “manipulation”, if you will, as to how, when and where the image was captured. Final result is below, “Mystic Falls.”

So, why are people picking on post-processing? With image-processing software getting more powerful by the day (it seems), for better or for worse, the possibilities of what can be done to a photo are changing exponentially by the day.

Keep in mind, post-processing predates digital photography! Yes, it’s true Ansel Adams famously spent hours in the darkroom “dodging” and “burning” his images (carefully overexposing some parts of the frame while underexposing others) many decades before Adobe unveiled Photoshop. Photographers have always used their favorite types of film (including black-and white) to achieve their desired look.


Also using a digital camera/phone inherently manipulates photos, especially when shooting JPG’s in Auto mode—the photographer is simply allowing the camera to do their manipulating for them. Digital cameras’ processors adjust everything from color saturation to contrast to white balance, instantly when the photo is taken (and some higher-end cameras even allow for some quick editing in-camera after the shot’s taken.)

Straightaway, there are also many innocuous components to post-production that take place in the same software platforms. There are a lot of subtle changes that can be made in Adobe Photoshop, for example, that the casual observer wouldn’t even notice: slight adaptations of white balance, color saturation, or noise reduction and so forth. But there’s also near-limitless possibilities, and opportunities for changes that are not-so-subtle.

There is even a place for a lot of the more extreme manipulations! For example, sky-replacement by the “Artisan” mentioned earlier may make a couple’s engagement shoot look amazing. The couple might care about how amazing and dramatic and memorable the photos look far more than they are concerned with the photographer’s alleged ethics.

My images are intended to convey a feeling to my audience and collectors: I want them to feel what it was like for me to be in that scene; what I was feeling as I took the shot. This often involves augmenting certain parts of the scene while hiding others. Creating an image is a process that requires the right tools in the field, and in the studio as well.

When the shutter clicks in the field, the image is now a “work in progress” and honestly, the fun and easy stuff is over. The headaches and real work still lie ahead. People who flippantly dismiss an image as “photoshopped” and almost sneer at whomever created it, clearly have never waded into these waters themselves. It is not easy work. To make something look right, to look believable, takes a lot of meticulous and time-consuming trial-and-error, and a lot of practice. I view my camera as an “information gathering” tool, and when I go back to the studio, I use more tools to put the finishing touches on the information gathered until I am happy with how it conveys the scene. It’s as simple as that. This may require blending multiple exposures together for various reasons. It may involve dozens of Photoshop layers, and I might work on it for 20 minutes, several weeks or sometimes even months or years.  

I have my own code that I live by, limits that I abide by when I create my images, as I think all photographers should. For example, I won’t add things to the scene that weren’t really there: I’ve been asked about sunbursts, leaves in the foreground of a river scene and so on. I consider sky replacement lazy and disingenuous with one exception—astrophotography. I’ve tried all types of methods for capturing the night sky in a landscape setting—and since I make large-format prints, the only way to do it right is to use a star tracker (this attaches to the tripod, and after being aligned with the North Star, it rotates to counteract the rotation of the Earth, allowing for longer exposures without the stars blurring.) I do this to achieve the best result—the best representation of the scene.

Taking the picture of the stars first in the middle of the night using a star-tracker, then taking long exposure of the foreground during astronomical twilight is a perfect way to convey the drama of a night sky and among terrestrial foregrounds. Pictured is “A Wrinkle in Time.”

All of these techniques have their time and place. I use things like bracketed/blended exposures (HDR) photography, tracking mounts for capturing the stars in the sky…basically anything I can do to make the end result more accurately depict the image in my mind’s eye. I’ll use whatever tools help me create the best representation of how I wanted to remember the scene. I’ve always been open about this, and I absolutely love it when people visiting my Gallery want to know a little bit more about the way an image was created! I consider it a romantic blend of art and science.

I promise I’ll never use my camera to tell you lies. Each image that I create is a manifestation of a scene I personally experienced. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I consider that a beautiful thing. It’s an honor to have the opportunity to share my images with so many people, and I will always stay faithful to my craft. It’s up to each photographer to determine how these tools, and their own ethics, come into play as they share their images with the world. 

I encourage discussion, leave your comment below!