The kind of photography I have done throughout my career has been documentary - be it wildlife, scenic, industrial, social or any other kind, I have never manipulated an image to show anything different from truth as I saw it at the time. I have often sought an artistic perspective or composition of a subject, but I have never substantially changed the content of the image.
Recently, I had to set that one aside... but for a good cause.
My next door neighbour from quite a few years and an on-going family friend has been a player in my world for about 20 years. She was often a help and haven to my family when someone was sick, or locked out of the house or just stressed because she had the steady, professional demeanor of a trauma nurse.
It was with huge shock and sadness that I discovered she had been diagnosed with aggressive terminal cancer. I wanted to make a portrait of her to have something for her family to cherish when she passed on. However, between one thing and another I had not been able to get a photo shoot going for several weeks.
My plan was to have her given a bit of a make-over - hair and cosmetic treatment to make her look her best, but when the family turned up none of that had happened: it took them over an hour just to get her out of the house to be able to travel to the venue they wanted. When they arrived, I was shattered by the devastation imposed on her by the cancer: her vacant eyes and remoteness. I was now faced with a haggard shell of the person I had known and respected.
Still, I took a series of images of them all, and with her alone. I presented them with the results as shot, but I was mindful of the expectation that, for many of those attending a service or celebration of her life, such a photo would be traumatic and distasteful and, above all, they didn't do her justice. One of the major revolutions of the photograph itself was the ability to see how a beloved ancestor once looked and I could not leave those images to posterity. So, I broke my rule.
I have always said I am a pretty basic Photoshop user, but now I was desperate, and I did a search in the help system for something that might help me to improve her image. I came across Photoshop's Neural filters and the de-aging algorithm, and I judiciously applied it to several images - the results were amazing to me.
While I appreciate the artistic application of such technology, I had not wanted to see it applied to manipulate the truth (although that horse has clearly bolted long ago). I didn't want to do any more than relieve some of the ravages of the disease - certainly not make her look like a spring chicken again.
So, here are the results (with permission):
I still struggle with this, but I hope it will be more comfortable to those left behind to look at the resultant images.
