Talk:Digital manipulation in railway photography

This article was nominated for deletion on 18 February 2016. The result of the discussion was merge to Railfan#Railway photography.

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Why does this exist?

Why does this section exist? Is it really necessary? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.36.101 (talk) 02:46, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a rather ridiculous article. If it stays, it's an argument for 'digital manipulation in [any particular subject matter of] photography'. I'd vote to remove this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:8:9400:10DB:F073:769E:A774:6EC (talk) 16:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Adding my voice to the notability problem. There isn't really any reason to have an article about digital manipulation in a specific genre of photography unless it raises broad-based, wide-ranging issues beyond its own scope, such as digital manipulation of fashion photos to change the body shape of the models. That has all kinds of social implications. Photoshopping a catenary tower out of a picture of some obscure locomotive seems somewhat less controversial, at least to most people. Vote to remove. Johnny Wishbone (talk) 18:16, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Minor point, it's an article, not a section, which points to the root of the problem. It's the intersection of two things: Railway photography and Photo manipulation and could be merged into either as a subsection. I figure the former is the proper home of a smaller version of this material. So, no, the proper fate of this article is not Wikipedia:Articles for deletion but Wikipedia:Merging.

Come to think of it, Railway photography is a section, not an article, and would be a better candidate for splitting into a separate article, especially when it has the material of this one. I figure first we merge, and after that we can discuss whether to split. We could alternately do it in the opposite sequence, first move most of the railway photography material here, making this a photographic genre article like Architectural photography, and then move it to the appropriate genre name. Or split first, followed by merging. Anyway, do we first have agreement that merging is more appropriate to this case than deleting? Jim.henderson (talk) 13:56, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A little more thought makes me prefer to rename this article to the new name first, then immediately afterwards do a cut and past of the rail fan photo section to the new article. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:54, 16 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Substandard example used

The manipulated version of the photograph used to illustrate this article shows sloppy use of the clone tool, particularly on the left side (okay, I know I'm criticising the work of an eleven-year old), and hasn't been used commercially. Since the point of this otiose article seems to be that "digitally manipulated" railway photographs cause "ethical problems" for trainspotters, should the images be replaced with a proper example? Ning-ning (talk) 07:55, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quality isn't particularly an issue here, clarity of the principle being illustrated is. If we have another pair of images, showing something so obvious as the removal of catenaries, then we could use those images instead. It would be a retrograde step though to use a single well-shopped image, or one that is merely changing the buttons on a guard's uniform. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:44, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The principle being that digital manipulation allows images to be altered significantly to the point where they are seemingly realistic but inauthentic. That's notable enough as a general principle; an article about digital manipulation of railway photos seems a bit redundant unless the "faking for publication" aspect is emphasised. I take your point that the photo used illustrates manipulation in a clear way, but it wouldn't pass as authentic because the clone stamp has left its characteric trails. Maybe some editor should cook up a photo of Lew in a sugar mill :) --Ning-ning (talk) 12:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]