Do your own thing

Richard Brown should not be disheartened because winning photographs in competitions are Photoshopped to death ( Inbox, AP 1 December 2018). This is but a branch of the lethal Gear Acquisition Syndrome. He should remember that almost all iconic photos of the past century have not been Photoshopped. Just ignore competitions – I learned this in 1950 from my experience in a great photographic society in Manchester, when the pundits told me that 35mm cameras would never cut it!

We all have our own style; I love monochrome film in a Leica M3 or M2, home processing in the kitchen with an enlarger built by Leitz in the 1930s. As Leicas go up in value, don’t go wrong, and not obsolescent in months, this is one of many cheap paths to enjoyment. Do your own thing, and let others who use computerised lenses and laptops to create fantasy images do theirs. Geoffrey Rivett

The main reason no iconic 20th- century pictures were Photoshopped is because Photoshop didn’t exist until 1988. But to say that none were heavily manipulated in the darkroom would be entirely wrong. In addition to pretty much every Hollywood portrait, you could add the work of legendary landscape photographers like Ansel Adams (see page 8). But I agree with your last comment – do your own thing. Nobody is forcing anybody to learn to use Photoshop, and in some genres of photography, such as documentary, heavy editing is still as much of a no-no as it has always been – Nigel Atherton, Editor