Once in a while, a kind stranger will tell me they really enjoy my work here because it is so *realistic*. They seem to imply that because I don’t heavily edit pictures that somehow my work as a photographer is more valuable. It puzzles me because, well, that just isn’t true. I am a child of the picnic photo editor generation. I /love/ to manipulate images in to deep fried JPEG goodness. I turn sliders all the way up- I am not afraid of screen tearing. I’ll add sparkles, halos, flare, even bubbles! What I don’t do is replace skies- and I’m not generally one to photoshop out distractions or replace parts of an image, and I think maybe that’s what some viewers must be noticing. There’s nothing wrong with these changes, and that should be said. It’s about storytelling, I get it. Each of these images has had its colors heavily manipulated to create a certain feeling. What feeling would you say each one has? They’re all gold and warm, but what does that mean with respect to the subject matter?