Title • candy bar

First of all, thanks for all the wonderful comments on yesterday's entry. As I write this it has 130 comments, tied for first place with this one. I have to say, though I like it a lot, that I didn't expect anywhere near such a positive response, but I guess that it struck a chord with a lot of you in much the same way as it did for me.

Anyway, I did intend to put up another kite shot today, that I also like, but after yesterday I don't think I want to post them back-to-back. So here's something slightly different.

As for post-processing – and I mean this comment generally, not specifically in relation to this shot – my own view is that there isn't any photograph you could show me that isn't post-processed in one way or another: the tonal response of the paper on which it's printed, the colour balance of the screen on which it's viewed, the particular effects of development time, and so on, and so on, and so on – all of these are post-processing, and using Photoshop on a digital image isn't any different to the myriad of decisions that go into the making of any photographic image.

The bottom line, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that there is no such thing as unmediated perception, not when I or you look at something (when our memories affect the way we see something, etc), and certainly not when we photograph it. It's all one big interpretive effort the important bit of which is the end result. Are you left with some sort of artefact that's evocative? Is the end result worth looking at or not? If the answer's yes, then the amount of post-processing is, for me, a total irrelevance.

11.41pm on 2/8/05

Canon 20D

EF 17-40 f/4L USM

25mm (40mm equiv.)

f/8.0

1/60

aperture priority

+0.0

evaluative

100

no

RAW

C1 Pro

minor