There seems to be some sort of "purist" standard being pushed with this topic of "enhancing" photos--based on what? The photos that we shoot and get prints of from the drugstore? Those are unaltered because no human hand has touched them or changed the level of brightness? Today even those are altered by the machine--Kodak has some kind of system that (to my dismay, so I stopped using it) lightens the background to the level of the subject in the foreground--thus tending to confuse how we view the photos. If you look at the negative, the background is still dark. It is the print image that was digitally "improved" by Kodak's machine.

The raw material of the image on the negative is subject to what the photographer was looking at and focusing upon. Once the negative is developed, other things in the image may become of more importance than the original subject. The original subject may not have been aligned exactly the way the photographer wanted. The photograph doesn't begin and end with clicking a button on a camera. The photographer makes use of it once the photo is printed--the intended use of the image may require cropping (removing extra material so you can focus in on a subject), it may require brightening the shot (whether through the length of exposure in the dark room or the abilities of Adobe PhotoShop). I often take photos of groups, knowing full well that when a photo is used only a few of the people will appear in the finished product. This isn't dishonest, this is simply using photography as a tool to communicate an image.

There is never going to be a photo that will meet the standards some of you are asking for. There is simply no point in trying to mark a photo as "enhanced" or to what degree it was enhanced.

As to what is in the eye of the beholder (the real issue here, perhaps?) the context, the printed or spoken word used in association with the image, is at least as important as the image.

SRS