Composite / Manipulated Images Definition Post

My view on image manipulation:

Personally speaking, I edit the majority of my images to make the features I like more emphasised and drawing more attention to these features. It can also help you create the type of image that you want as editing can change the overall feelings/emotions that the picture presents. On the other hand, editing images does change realism of the picture. For example if you capture a landscape, then edit the levels in the picture, it is changing the natural lighting and the natural scenery, which is potentially disregarding the whole point of landscape photography as you are not showing the image as it was, it did not look like that, it was artificially manipulated to the photographers preference.

Ethical / personal issues with image manipulation:

With portraiture, a common thing to do is manipulate the image to correct any imperfections that the model may have e.g. blurring out spots and making someones eyes a different colour/bigger. This is to make the image seem perfect. This could potentially be a ethical issues as editing someone is changing what they look like. 

There can also be ethical issues which support the use of image manipulation. For example a documentary photographer who may have photographed a crime scene that involves some gory features, they may edit out some parts of the picture as they might upset some people or be discomforting to look it so it would be unethical to show the public the image in its entirety.

Areas of Industry / art & design are manipulated images used in:

I think that manipulated images are often used in magazine / fashion industry as they have a specific 'image' and 'look' that they want to create in fashion magazines, so by manipulating photos, especially models / portraits, helps the editors to create the ideal or perfect look that they want or are expected to have. Manipulated images is also a big factor in all sorts of advertisement. This is because obviously the main aim of advertisement is to maximise potential of what is being advertised, this is to make it look more appealing to potential customers so they find the product or service desirable. This can be done easily by manipulating images to create this. In addition, the news and reality journalism could also use manipulated images to make sure images are suitable for their specific audience. This is related to an ethical factor that I spoke about above.

Banal:
If an object is banal, it is thought to be something that is very familiar for people to see as we often see it in everyday scenarios.