Ethical Demons
I really don’t want these tools…
I make a big deal about my practice of photography. I don’t crop. But that’s a lie. I certainly have croppped, but I try not to, I generally don’t, and on the off-chance that I feel the need to, I only crop in proportion to the original frame — a small concession but it gives a consistent feeling across images. Still, a rationalization. In my heart I consider the need to crop a failure. So my practice is not to crop, even if I miss sometimes.
So with that strict internal-and-somewhat-conflicted policy in mind, I just returned from Japan. I shot about 2000 images, about 100, for me, make the cut.
But there was this one. A couple dressed in kimonos were milling around in the Bamboo Forest in Kyoto. There were ebbs and flows of people in the area, but they seemed to be hanging. I tried to catch them among the trees, but people kept walking by. I’d say I missed, I didn’t get the shot I was aiming for. I got down low to minimize the crowd, but still…
At the hotel later, I decided to try the AI-fill tool in Lightroom, and the image…
