All of my photos are edited (I shoot in raw). Whether or not they’re “heavily” edited I don’t know. I “edit” a lot at the time of the shot. I deliberately overexpose to get a white background (often re-positioning myself so that the clouds/sky are the background). I deliberately underexpose with flash to get a black background. Taking the white background as a example, by the time the photos get to lightroom the subject is overexposed as well as the background, so I’ll isolate the subject and bring the exposure back down to what it “should” be. At the same time I’ll bump up the exposure of the already almost pure white background so it’s 100% white. I really don’t know if this is heavy editing or not because I get 90% or more of the way there using the camera… I regard my editing as a final tweak
I also use focus stacking and these shots can often look like a painting or illustration. Edit: I just had a quick look and I don’t think I’ve uploaded my best focus stacked shots… they’d probably get flagged as AI generated even though they’re not :)
There is another thing that drives me mad: Some observers catch spiders and insects and put them in a box or tupperware container in order to photograph the animal, but their box is decorated with small sticks and dry leaves - that way you can’t see that this animal is captive in a box. And before I realized this I was wondering what the heck this type of spider was doing in leaf litter etc.
I’d like to make it mandatory that you say in a comment if you capture something and put it in a natural looking habitat that is actually a cage stuffed with plant matter.
When making observations in urban settings, I could definitely see merit in blurring or obscuring details like license plates or human bystanders. I’ve yet to encounter a situation where I couldn’t get a different angle or tighter crop to work just as well, but you never know.
Indeed, I’ve seen quite a few of these “floating flowers” with everything else blurred. Sometimes this renders what might be identifiable to species based on leaf and stem details impossible to ID past genus. It can be helpful to clarify what the subject is in an otherwise messy vegetation shot, but I really wished people would include the unblurred pictures maybe as a second image to allow identifiers to check for details like leaf margins, hairs on the stem etc.
What is this about? Normal photos of flowers will have the stems and everything else blurred. That’s an effect of the camera, not editing. What am I missing here?
Unless it’s due to a very shallow depth of field resulting from low f-number, then it’s edited either intentionally by the photographer, or automatically by camera software
It comes across as pretty jarring when I see these birds perched on a branch and the background is a bright blue sky with puffy clouds - depth of field would make these shots not possible so it comes across as a fantasy depiction. I agree with what the others said, that if you have to post this, please provide the original images in the same observation.
I would post the unedited original to iNaturalist and the arty edited version elsewhere. iNaturalist is primarily a scientific and educational resource that we all rely on for accurate information. There are many other venues for artistic expression.
It’s about people using phone apps or websites that allow them to use AI to blur the background on pictures to simulate bokeh (in-camera blur due to shallow depth of field). The same can be done with Photoshop of course, but I think most people who use Photoshop know a thing or two about photo editing and when to stop. Some of these cases are clearly overdone. To demonstrate without calling out a specific user, I’ve taken one of my own pictures and tried to recreate the effect I’m seeing with MagicStudio.
This is clearly not done in-camera. Note how it blurred out important and interesting detail, such as ribbing and hairs on the stem, a hoverfly interacting with the flowers, and even the entire right side of the plant with the developing fruits.
Those pictures are excellent and including a size bar is the icing on the cake! Just the kind of thing botanists would drool over, so don’t be shy about adding them to your observation. This type of editing brings out natural features that would otherwise go unnoticed, and in my view is similar to e.g. adding microscopy.
Even though the photo features a overexposed monotone background, these pictures are great for plants because the focus stacking shows all parts of the plant in focus and full detail. The inclusion of a scale bar is really nice, even though that would be considered editing.
It’s less about the amount of editing and more if the editing obscures important details and only adds aesthetic value.
I have a funny upload that sort of falls into this category. I was doing outdoor programming with kids and was using the book A Seed Is Sleepy by Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long, which has botanical illustrations. A Western Conifer Seed Bug decided to explore the book, so now I have this unedited image of an organism with an odd background: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/248117422
