Originally Posted by
Lyneham Lad
I doubt if the photograph is straight photography. I am not accusing the photographer of anything. Since nearly the beginning of photography, some images have been made by recording what is in front of the camera (however artfully that may have been arranged) and some have been assembled in the darkroom. At various time, assembled and manipulated images have been thought to be more artful.
The photographer is not presenting this as evidence of something that happened in the real world. It's a picture. He's obviously deliberately tilted the horizon (or allowed a tilted horizon to stay uncorrected). This is consistent with composition of the final image in the darkroom. I'm more into straight photography myself, but don't regard manipulated images as "trickery" unless there's an intention to deceive. I find the photograph rather haunting, far beyond the interest of its subject matter or the quality of presentation of the main subject. But I don't think this particular event happened, and he was lucky enough to be there to capture it.