Prompt #6 Ethics

Q: In your opinion, when is it beneficial, ethical, or appropriate to digitally alter photographic portraits? When do you think it is inappropriate or ethically wrong?

A: I love Photoshop. It is my preferred medium. I love sitting and editing pictures and cutting out selections (the hair!) and putting the people in new locations and adding things and subtracting things (not in the traditional mathematical sense, but technically on Photoshop, it's all math). It's what I've been doing for years. I started long before I considered myself an artist.

But there are several types of altering photographs. The image to the left has been edited. Faith Hill's arm is made to look much skinnier than her actual arm. It almost looks like just her bones. And her face has of course been made to looks as though it is glowing from within. Her eyes are made larger (and her smile no longer reaches them), wrinkles gone. The only retouching I have ever done in this vein is make teeth look whiter and blue eyes bluer. I also would probably edit hair to make it look more flowy, but I've never done that so far. But retouching a photo I've taken to make the model look skinnier? I can't imagine myself doing that, and I hope that I never get put in a position where I will have to.
People looking at these photos think they're real and they judge themselves more harshly because they can't attain that perfection. When in reality, any one of us put through the same retouching would look just as beautiful as the women on the cover.  And also just as fake. I believe magazine editors and fashion industries should rely on other methods of catching peoples attention. It's actually amazing how far some people will go, if you look at the Ralph Lauren ads. I'm actually still deciding whether I think this is a joke or not. She looks like she belongs in The Sims.

But never editing portraits at all? I would never suggest that. Sometimes there is very good reason to alter and edit a portrait. If nobody ever altered a portrait because they considered it immoral, then we would never have portrait like this:

Or this:

Or my own:

 These are example where editing the photo has MADE the photo. There is simply no way to get these photos without digital editing. I don't think any of you would say that these three examples display unethical values.
But there is also a gray area. And for this I'll have to use some of my own examples. There are artists out there (i.e. my roommate) who use Photoshop as little as possible in his or her photography, which I respect very much. I thought of my own photo below, Jumping and Juggling, where I rearranged the juggling balls and the flower. But just before I started feeling bad about my own Photoshop habits, I realized the type of art I aspire to make is stuff like this:

 and this

So I never had a chance to feel bad. I can't just magically have the talent to create images like this, and I don't want to magically have that talent either, I just want to keep using Photoshop and making fantastic art.