Hi Alex - You've only been shooting a DSLR for a year or so? Outstanding. And don't let the people who say your creativity lessens your credibility as a photographer stop you. Yes, there are certain arenas where modifying an image is verboten. I shoot for Getty Images and there are incredibly strict guidelines in place when shooting editorial work - no mods whatsoever. They want unretouched, uncorrected TIFF files period. However, what you are doing photographically is not necessarily editorial work so make the photographs yours, and please yourself first and THEN worry about what someone else might think. You are very good and I hope you keep shooting what YOU want the way YOU want it to look. I've shot a lot of aviation work and if this is what you can do at a young age, keep at it and start sending your stuff in to the magazines now. Don't shoot for the moon (i.e. Flying Magazine) right off the bat but use that as an eventual target market and go for it! Very, very nice work, retouching and all!

alan

I very much appreciate your critique. This image is edited only as an HDR. I use a program called Fusion HDR and I really like it. HDR makes A photo look so much better.Why is it that Getty images don't like you to edit? I would say they are cheating tehmselves.

How did you know how long I've been shooting????

Hi Alex,

I gave this photo a 1 star. It just does not "look" right.

Please note one of your comments was:
"Sweet photo Paul. This appears to be a HDR shot too correct.
Written on 20/12/2013

and, more seriously
"I rarely alter photos myself, but I just thought I'd do it to see if anyone would catch it. I picked up DSLR for the first time about 7 months ago just before my fourteenth birthday and thought i'd pull a small stunt for somthing dumb to do. If you really think it's a problem I can ask the staff to delete it sometime.
Written on 20/12/2013

What I meant by alter was cutting and pasting objects where they were not originally. HDR is not altering it is editing! as far as the "sweet photo Paul" thing goes I do not see that it is even relevant to the issue.

HI Alex - Sorry about the delay in replying... Getty does not want any retouching on the editorial work for a number of reasons, chief among them being during one of the Israeli reactions to Hamas shooting rockets into civilian areas, a photographer shot a picture of a town where one of the Israeli "reactions" landed. It left a column of black smoke rising above the city where it landed. The photographer, who apparently could not let his opinion of the Israelis remain out of his submissions, "cloned" the smoke column and placed it in a half dozen other places on the image, making it look like the Israeli strike was far more widespread than it actually was. The photo ran on hundreds of newspapers and magazines before someone brought the fact that each of the smoke columns was identical, something that I can tell you from experience NEVER happens. Journalism is about objectivity; you take pictures, not sides, and this person broke that "law" in spades. His career as a photojournalist is over, and rightly so. Afterwards, Getty sent out an email to all their shooters - staff, contract and contributors - stating that no modifications would be accepted. In fact, if you go so far as to use a polarizer for a shot you MUST state that on the IPTN caption file. Now, for their lifestyle and stock photography that will not be used editorially, you're free to do whatever you want to an image you submit but you also have to state that it was "photoshopped" or otherwise modified in the IPTN sidecar file. By the way, I read on one of your posts that you'd only been shooting for a year or so at the time.

Keep shooting. You're good at it!

alan