Would it still be considered a photograph...

If you doctor up a shot in Lightroom and Photoshop?  Like removing a distracting trash can from the shot, lighting up skin tones of the model, remove graffiti from a building, etc.?  

Of course it would still be a photograph......

Would it become an 'image' then 

Remember the meaning  photograph. Photo=light and graph=image. That said, there are as many opinions about photographs as there are photographers. As a member of two clubs in different countries and affiliated through the clubs with national organizations, each one has rules and/or guidelines for their competitions. General changes like the ones you mention are almost always permissible. A nationally certifies judge from several organizations (at out club evaluation this week) even suggested "flipping" the photo vertically to move the leading lines from the right to the left as long as there were no signs or the area was so well known that a judge who know it had been altered that way.

If a photo is significantly altered it could be considered a photo illustration. I have some background in sports and events and what you describe would not be considered acceptable. In that situation to keep a trash can out of a photo I'd need to move around and change my vantage point so it's not in the frame (or is in the composition in a way that it isn't a distraction).

A photo illustration may often be a montage etc., and usually in photojournalism indicates the photo was altered, compared to a photograph that recorded what was actually there when the picture was taken. People and objects cannot be removed from a photo for it to meet good sports or photojournalistic standards.   

However I also do art prints, and do what are called alternate processes; I don't know if those would be called photographs but are considered to be photographic processes. I think it depends on how you use a photo and if what you do is acceptable for a particular purpose.

I think Sharon nailed it: The requirements determine the definition. A photo can certainly be transformed into a new work of art in post processing, but ordinarily, minor edits to the image, such as clarity, contrast, color balance, etc., are not considered to be manipulation, or transformative.

Photo manipulation is the application of image editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception after the original photographing took place. (As good a definition as any, from Wikipedia.)

Rob

+1 I'll agree with that

Image/photo?  Same thing. It's the purist who might have something to say. 

Kayce wrote: Image/photo?  Same thing. It's the purist who might have something to say. 

No that is not the case as Sharon pointed out. A drawing is an image, so is it a photograph as well?
One is merely an illustration, the other is a record. If you remove things from a photograph then it no longer is just a recording of a subject. Would you be fine with photojournalists subtracting, or adding things into their images to make the story pop?
I am not saying in any way that there is anything wrong with doing this, as I have done it many times to rid my images of unavoidable clutter. But to think that seeing one way as being an actual photographic record, and the other not being so as being a purist, is not correct either.
The only true and real adjustments acceptable for a pure shot is to adjust flaws in the capture itself. Such as brightness, tonality, cropping, and sharpness. When you start to manipulated parts of the scene in the image, it becomes artistic illustration. But in truth we do manipulate the reality of the scene just by the way we shoot it as well, when we choose to not shoot it fully in its relation to the world surrounding it. Our images/photographs are merely an example of how we see a given part of the world around us at a moment, nothing more, nothing less.

"Our images/photographs are merely an example of how we see a given part of the world around us at a moment, nothing more, nothing less."

I agree, if we're talking about shooting for our own amusement, or to record a particular moment in space and time for posterity. But if we shoot to share our images with others, whether for commercial purposes, for competition, or for artistic expression, then we add the dynamic of performance into the mix. That dynamic is worth exploring, because we are then not simply sharing how we see the world around us in that moment, but shaping it to have a particular effect on others.  

"Would you be fine with photojournalists subtracting, or adding things into their images to make the story pop?".....I wouldn't, and they do it all the time....I won't mention names....

To the OP, call it what you want...geesh....

Photographers have always dodged, Burned, and cropped their images to give the feel they want. The fact that we have me technology today does not negate the "photography" aspect. Photography if simply drawing with light and that part of the process remains. Post production editing has it's place and as long as the context is correct and the work is ethical I have no issues with call it a photograph.

You all gave me much to think about.  Thank you!

Harper Coswell wrote: You all gave me much to think about.  Thank you!

A few other things to think about, just for fun...

When we experience a moment in space and time, we can't divorce what we see from the data we're acquiring with our other senses: the sound of the surf, the wind rustling the leaves, the cry of birds, the sun beating down, other people around us, even the feel of the camera as we take the shot. Then there are our emotions, and our own projections on the scene. There's possibly even a quantum physics aspect to it, in that our very observations of a subject may change the reality of it.

Fun stuff aside, the first edit of the image is mental: We experience something on multiple levels that moves us to capture the moment, but we aren't really capturing the "moment," are we? Even if we strip out all of the other influences present, and only focus on our sense of sight, we're "arranging" the scene, even if we simply move this way or that to avoid a garbage can. If the garbage can is a prominent object at the scene, then by avoiding it in composing the shot, we've already edited the photo before we push the shutter release. But even without such considerations, the truth is that every time we take a shot, we're reducing the 3-dimensional image to two dimensions. We're "dumbing it down," and it becomes something else entirely. It's now a poor simulation of the original. If it was awe-inspiring to see it in 3 dimensions, it's often disappointing to view it with one dimension removed from it. So, what do we do to communicate that awesomeness to someone who wasn't there?

Well, we can manipulate it with settings. The second edit involves the internal default camera settings, plus the settings we choose, the white balance, the ISO, the F-stop, etc. As an example, I've taken shots of the moon on nights in which the sky had no stars visible to the naked eye, and not even in live view at 300mm zoom, doubled. Later, looking at the shot in 100% view in PS, the screen is full of stars. The "moment", then, has had objects added to it, just because of the settings I used.

The third edit is working with the RAW image settings. I can enhance it, edit for clarity, change the white balance, slide the vibrance, saturation, bump up the exposure or bump up the blacks, and on and on - not to mention choosing to add HDR effects. I may end up with an awesome image when I'm done, but is it a faithful rendition of the original experience?

My question is a simple one, but I don't believe there is an obvious answer:

Is there an editing line that photographers are faced with in every shot, on one side of which is integrity and ethical treatment of the subject, and on the other side of which is dishonesty, deceit and manipulation?

Rob

Well I asked this because I had seen a discussion where a couple photographers on Facebook got all worked up about whether an photo, was a photo.  All because the photographer post processed it in Lightroom.  Actually might have been Photoshop, but you get the point.