Before And After: Photographic Reality

When does a photograph show reality? Is it when it looks like the photographer remembered it (highly subjective and dubious)?

Is it when it looks like the scene ‘ought to look’?

I stop short of changing reportage images to convey a lie , but for images that don’t purport to report, I just go for whatever I want to do, and forget about what the scene actually looked like.

Then Again

Then again, I wouldn’t want to do this except to illustrate a point:

I Wouldn’t Change This One

I framed what I saw as the center of interest. I didn’t frame the scene to avoid including something that would contradict what the image seems to me to convey. I wouldn’t do that with this kind of image.