Other things being equal, you get more detail in a digital photograph using a bigger sensor than a smaller one.  This means a larger camera body (eg an SLR) and lenses, often a tripod, and more weight.  I’m mainly interested in landscapes, which presents some logistical problems, especially when travelling on skis.  Falling in deep soft snow with an SLR kit may require outside assistance.  A face-plant on hard snow or ice may also require the services of a plastic surgeon.

Ansel Adams made some of his most famous images using heavy equipment and from the back of his pickup truck.  Not a wilderness experience, but great photography.  Peter Dombrovskis made his using a large format camera, but my understanding is that he carried a large weight to a base camp (having previsualised the photos he wanted) and then waited for days for the right conditions.  Those of us who want to combine human powered travel in wild places with photography, but lack the talent and drive of an Adams or a Dombrovskis, have to compromise.

On this trip I used a Panasonic Lumix GX7 with a couple of zoom lenses (9-18 mm and 14-42 mm), minimal accessories, and no tripod, meaning a fraction of the weight of an SLR system but much more versatility and image quality than a compact point-and-shoot camera.  For those not familiar with the acronyms and technicalities, the GX7 belongs to the comparatively new category of Micro Four Thirds digital cameras (aka μ43, M43).  M43 has a wide choice of small but high quality lenses, although on this tour the two zooms did most of what I needed.  It would be good to have had more lenses with me, but there are limits!  Anyway, as Ansel Adams said, the most important part of a camera system is the twelve inches behind the camera body.

Of more interest than the equipment used, are the ethics of the photographer.  A common question is “did you Photoshop that?”  In the digital era we have become very suspicious of photography.  Most of the photographs I sent from Norway (and shown on this site) had been altered in some way.  Before you get indignant about this, I’ll explain.

Technology has its limitations, and the sensors in digital cameras usually produce an artificially “flat” record of reality.  A raw image file contains less contrast, is less sharp, and has fairly washed-out colours.  This is true, as far as I know, for all but the most exotic and expensive sensors.  Camera manufacturers, and photographers using software to process raw images, therefore need to recreate the original scene by using proprietary algorithms embedded in the camera’s firmware (in the case of manufacturers) and "manual" software adjustments (in the case of photographers).

Thus, from the start, value judgments are inevitable.  Those who know what to look for can often tell what brand of camera was used, because manufacturers apply a certain “look” to JPGs (the universal compressed file format for digital photos) produced by their equipment:  Nikon and Panasonic are known for having comparatively “flat” JPGs, while Canon, Fujifilm and Olympus have more “punchy” JPGs.  The type of glass used in lenses can produce subtle variations too.  It’s all more subjective than you might think. [Incidentally, this is also why selecting a camera just on the number of advertised megapixels is a bad idea.  Having more megapixels is good, but a lot of other factors influence image quality.]

Composing and cropping photographs is another “editorial” decision that is usually taken for granted.  And from quantum physics a hundred years ago, we learnt that the act of observing necessarily involves an impact on the subject.  That is minimally true of landscape photography, but powerfully true of portrait and street photography.

What I do think is deceitful is removing or inserting objects (eg those absurd advertisements showing a shiny new 4WD sans dust in the middle of the desert or on the edge of some inaccessible cliff), or cranking up the saturation of colours beyond what was actually there.

Even prior to the digital era, a simple landscape snap was usually not what the naked eye would have seen, because if the photographer used a moderate to small lens aperture almost everything in the resulting image would have been in focus.  That isn't the way the human eye works- it can focus on something close or something distant, but cannot do both simultaneously.  Try it!  Even a simple photo is always a product of technology and human judgement, and indeed is an illusion because it only depicts what was in the past.  If "the camera doesn't lie" was ever true, it certainly is not today.

One of the technical challenges in photographing Norway in winter is the blueness of many snowy scenes.  It’s real enough, but it can look quite unreal; an understandable reaction would be that a blue filter was used or that the blue was enhanced on the computer afterwards.  In fact, blue gets into pictures of snow and ice because the ice crystals are reflecting, even indirectly and even at night, the blue of the sky, which in any case is not the colour of the sky itself but a product of light travelling through the Earth’s atmosphere.  Should the blue be reduced artificially to make a picture more “credible”?  Norwegians call the time after sunset the “blå time” (the “blue hour”) and the two photographs titled “Approaching Fefor Høyfjellshotell by moonlight” are good examples of that phenomenon.

The "antique" looking photograph of Espedalsvatnet was of course manipulated (just a software preset in Nik Silver Efex Pro, very easy to do) and might verge on kitsch, but only inasmuch as it reflects an idea or a vision.  I hope that doesn't sound pretentious.  On the other hand putting a sailing boat on the lake digitally would be (to me) dishonest, although someone with a different aesthetic might do it to express a particular idea.  Ultimately, a photograph can be just as subjective and artificial as a painting (eg the very literal documentation of a Canaletto versus the emotion and drama of a Turner- I know which inspires me more), a drawing or a print.  If you think that's a subjective and slippery slope, you're probably right.  Welcome to postmodernism!  End of lecture (Art and Society 101).

For more on this controversial subject (just one example among many such discussions on the internet), see this thread on one of my favourite web sites, The Luminous Landscape.  Kevin Raber's photographs are great, although I do think their colour is exaggerated in some cases, but that’s his style.  Ditto for Peter Eastway- this in particular seems highly contrived, although the post-production adjustments showed, according to the photographer, what he had actually seen.  Except for the human figure he added to emphasise the scale!  And then there is the overlapping topic of craft versus art.  Thom Hogan, who always has something useful to say about photography, recently wrote this on craft versus art in photography.  I’d argue that a lot of his observations also apply to creative activities outside photography- gardening, upholstery, music and woodwork for example.

For something completely different, have a look at Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York.  Photography can be whatever we make of it.  I’m usually uncomfortable taking this sort of photo, although it’s evident that most of his subjects were happy to be snapped.  I suppose that illustrates the difference between being a street photographer with a small camera and a friendly demeanour, and being one of the telephoto-wielding paparazzi.  I’m neither.