thoughts on creating beauty

i had a wonderful photoshoot yesterday with a friend and her lovely pup (as you can see, ruby is a gorgeous pitbull). this is the first time i've had the tools to really do the post-processing in the way i want to, as i now have photoshop. i've found some really amazing tools to help the whole p-shop world, such as textures and actions from 'flourish'.

i have mixed feelings about the whole post-processing part of the photography business. i was just checking out all that is offered on flourish and am pretty amazed at all of the options to make your picture look vintage. but here's where my mixed feelings come in. There are actions that make your photo look like a ttv photo (which she describes as a toy camera...which its not), a diana or a holga. This is making me realize that I'm a bit of a purist! I carry around my vintage camera, holga and diana and am stumbling through learning how to make beautiful photos with all of their old or toy camera excentricities!

I guess I am a bit intimidated by the gorgeousness that people can create using these photoshop actions...you can turn any picture into a ttv photo by just adding a frame...but its not really authentic to what you really do make with a vintage camera. they distortion, the dust, the blur and the magic. what i adore most about toy cameras is that it feels like they bring the most advanced photographer and the beginner to the same playing field. We all look through its plastic lense and have the same possibilities of beauty. I guess with these vintage actions i feel like it splits the playing field again...that anyone can make anything into a ttv photoshop without having the experience of looking down a handmade paper contraption into an old dusty camera, looking for magic. And i suppose that it doesn't feel like these fancy photoshop pictures should be called ttv (maybe she made that descriptive mistake on purpose!). I guess in a way i feel like they should have a disclaimer on them stating they are 'digitally enhanced' kind of like how organic fruit and gmo fruit should be differently labelled (dangerous comparison perhaps but i am feeling fiesty about this at the moment!)

that said, this purist is being faced with learning photoshop and trying to figure out my place in the post production world of photography. how 'photoshopped' do i want my pictures to look? how can i produce images that are enhanced without feeling like a sell-out? i'm starting to sort this out, to find out what feels right.