––– Is That Photo Real? That's a question someone left in the comments of one of my images. I haven't answered yet. I couldn't think of the "short version". Let's leave off with the pithy comeback that first danced across my mind, "Do you mean, as opposed to a figment of your imagination?" Nah … let's not go there. How about, "Do you mean, did I process it myself on my own computer, as opposed to letting the computer in the camera process it?" Since that's what we are talking about here. Because, you know, what comes straight out of a camera isn't any more "real" than what an artist envisions for a capture, after the fact. Truth is tendency. Reality is relative. While the mechanics of the filters we humans use to perceive the "reality" around us vary from those which a camera uses, we still have filters in place that modify the "factual" information we receive from our environment. Those filters,