The Way It Is

I was talking to a friend about the photo in my last post- the one of the boys playing soccer behind the Taj- and whether it was improved or flawed by the line in the sand. It made him uncomfortable how it neatly connected the two boys, and thought the shot would be better without it. He suggested i photoshop it out. So, for fun, i did.

Call me a purist, but as a general rule, i refuse to alter my photographs in any significant way. I don't mind cleaning something up, or tweaking a few details, but to represent something in a way that drastically differs from the way it actually was, goes against why i love photography. I love that spontaneous moment that makes a photograph what it is, when all the details just come together and it clicks! I think that, if it didn't happen, if something is out of place, if something isn't perfect, well then it just wasn't that moment, and isn't that photograph. And in the case of the Taj, well, that's the way i shot it. It would somehow alter my memory of the moment to edit the image. To me, that line in the sand was the whole reason those boys were there that morning, playing in the rising sun, and i'm grateful for it.