There's an old joke that Picasso received a commission to paint a portrait of a man's wife. After the canvas was delivered, some Cubist monstrosity, no doubt, the man sought him out, very upset.

"That doesn't look anything like my wife.", he said.

"And what does your wife look like?" replied the artist.

"Like this!", said the man, showing Picasso a wallet-sized photograph.

Picasso studied the picture for a while, then remarked, "She's very small, isn't she?"

It's unavoidable, a photograph captures a moment in time, which may give little idea of the action that it interrupted. Photographs are composed, cropped, manipulated by lens selection and a variety of lighting, exposure, filters, photographic and processing techniques, and shots for publication are selected from hundreds which never see the light of day. That's why professionals use autoloading film cameras and assitants who continuously load new film magazines into spare camera bodies. Out of hundreds of shots at a basketball game only a handful make Sports Illustrated; and of course, they are dramatic and striking. Digital photography adds a whole new arsenal of tricks, even if the photographer is trying to be honest, he is also trying to make his picture "interesting". Perhaps the old Matthew Brady stiff-posed, formal daguerrotype is the only really honest photograph.

When I was a kid, I met a photographer at the beach who was shooting pictures at night. I asked him what he was doing, because I thought there wasn't enough light, and he gave me a very interesting little lesson in photographic ethics. He was a medical photographer, and took pictures of tissue samples and lab specimens, so he was very concerned about reproducing exactly what he saw so it would be useful for doctors. He was very concerned about lighting, and color, to the point that the only film he felt was suitable for his work was from a German company which had discontinued his favorite emulsion. He bought all the remaining stock he could and kept it refrigerated because he didn't know if he could do his job properly with commercial film. He said most film was formulated so it would look pretty to the consumer, not so it would record color faithfully for the scientist. When I pointed out he was taking artsy-fartsy pictures at night on the beach and under the pier, he conceded that he did it just for fun, but that it wasn't real photography. He told me, "you can make any picture you take good enough to win a prize in a contest, just crop it right and print your color negative onto black and white paper. The most prosaic shot can be made to look artistic and mysterious."

"The real art of photography", he said, "is to make things look as they really are. If you want to reveal anything beneath or beyond the appearance, get a painter."