the danger of talking tech....

Who cares about "fair".
People who organize competitions.

People who organize them are only interested in the amount of work it takes. People who enter them care about 'fair'.
Eh? Both.

If you do steroids, for example, the NBA / NFL / Olympics Committee / etc. are the ones who ban you from competing, not other players. It's in the interest of everybody (except people who are currently cheating) involved in any competition to have everyone on an equal footing. Otherwise the results are meaningless and the organizers suffer the embarrassment of having botched their job.

I assume she is allowing point and shoots, etc., since it is a high school, and they don't have the money to provide standard cameras. As a result, they can't assume everybody owns any particular kind, so her hands are sort of tied in allowing various cameras.

Photoshop, however, is unnecessary and thus something that it makes perfect sense to not want anybody to have access to. Except perhaps for edits minor enough that you could do them in free and well known programs like MS Paint.
 
I'd agree with other comments that the teacher might be trying to avoid having a student have what seems like an advantage, or it could be that the teacher just wants the students to do this project themselves and for this project your daughter may need to follow the guidelines given.

I've been a teacher although I've worked in more recent years in a nontraditional teaching job, but I wouldn't have a problem with a parent asking questions. I'd usually encourage families to get their questions answered rather than to keep wondering or having concerns.

It seems like if you knew what the photo competition was or who's sponsoring it, that might alleviate your concerns, but there may be some reason the teacher didn't tell the students the specifics of the competition. The only thing I can think of is maybe the teacher doesn't want the students taking photos specifically geared just for the contest, that maybe she wants them to take photos creatively and that show their own thought process and vision of the world.

I have read that there are some contests with terms that give the company sponsoring it unlimited use of user submitted photos so are able to sell them as stock photos, etc. The teacher may not be aware that type of thing is happening in photography these days, but if this is a legitimate competition held by a geographic organization then there may not be cause for concern. Perhaps if you explained your concerns to the teacher she could answer your questions and still maintain the project in a way that meets her objectives for the class.
 
The only conclusion I can come to is that she knows nothing about photography...

So what?

She's a teacher. Unless she's a photography teacher, there would really be no need for her to be well versed in that field...

and is afraid that providing a proper copy of the rules will lead to cheating or trying to push the boundaries.

And, indeed, it may. Do you know, either way, for sure?

It's infuriating when the assumption is that if you use Photoshop or other editing software that it's cheating.

"Infuriating"?

I guess I could see it being "frustrating", but "infuriating"? The drama factor is high.

With regards to your thread title, I think the only "danger" is that you seem to get upset when someone, who has no need to be versed in photography, is not versed in photography...
 
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People use the term "Photoshop" similar to the way they use the term "Xerox" or "Kleenex".

I suspect it's not the adjustment aspects (the notion that you might fix the white balance, saturation, exposure, levels/curves, etc.) but probably MORE the notion that she doesn't want students creating heavily edited and "composite" images (e.g. altering the content of the image to take away or add things to it such that the image no longer represents what was in front of the camera when you took the image.)
 
weepete; if your daughter actually does all of the post-shoot editing (with you watching over her shoulder) then the work will be entirely hers, and the teacher won't be able to pick nits with it.
 
I did 4-H. When they first introduced the photography project (in my state), it had to be film. (1999) When they started allowing digital (around 2005ish), they stated very clearly that editing was *not* allowed. Now, even at 15, I was well versed in the use of photoshop. I didn't use it that well, but I knew how it worked. ;) There was a separate category for "editing", which I frequently won. All other photos were to be straight out of camera. Now, in 2013, it doesn't actually *say* "no editing" anymore, but it's still frowned upon. I encourage the kids I work with to *only* do basic raw processing, if anything (some shoot jpg). There's still an editing category.

Coming from this background, I find it completely within the teacher's rights to say no edits. Since they're allowing *any* camera, taking editing out of the equation levels the playing field just a little. Your daughter will already be world's beyond the iPhone shots because she has access to your DSLR. Let her shoot raw or raw+jpg and enter a barely processed image, but have fun with one for *her*. I edited everything when I was doing 4-H. I just didn't enter those versions. ;) When you participate in a contest or a school activity, you follow the rules, even when you don't agree. It's part of life.
 
The problem is that photoshop can be used from minor things that could be done easily in the darkroom, to flat out manipulations that do not resemble anything that we can agree on as real, but nonetheless appear to be so. This blurs the boundaries of what is "photography", a boundary which has always existed, but is now more accessable with less experience and technical skill. When most people think of photoshop, they think of the more extreme, without having used Photoshop, they do not realize what it is, and that it is used every day in every aspect post-exposure, from postproduction to prepress. They think of only what they can clearly see - sharks in a hotel lobby or an impossibly thin celebrities.

I don't think most people even have the knowledge to make the conclusion that photoshop is somehow cheating, and I don't think that this is what most people mean. What they do consider cheating is special effects and composite photographs that do not bear resemblance to the objective subject.
 
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People who organize competitions.

People who organize them are only interested in the amount of work it takes. People who enter them care about 'fair'.
Eh? Both.

If you do steroids, for example, the NBA / NFL / Olympics Committee / etc. are the ones who ban you from competing, not other players. It's in the interest of everybody (except people who are currently cheating) involved in any competition to have everyone on an equal footing. Otherwise the results are meaningless and the organizers suffer the embarrassment of having botched their job.

I assume she is allowing point and shoots, etc., since it is a high school, and they don't have the money to provide standard cameras. As a result, they can't assume everybody owns any particular kind, so her hands are sort of tied in allowing various cameras.

Photoshop, however, is unnecessary and thus something that it makes perfect sense to not want anybody to have access to. Except perhaps for edits minor enough that you could do them in free and well known programs like MS Paint.

Right, this is definitely comparable to steroid use in the Olympics.

Again, my post was within reason - if you are going to go so out of the way, why not mention hiring a professional photographer to shoot it for you? You over do just about every post you enter in the forum. Take a break man. Sit this one out.
 
Right, this is definitely comparable to steroid use in the Olympics.

Again, my post was within reason - if you are going to go so out of the way, why not mention hiring a professional photographer to shoot it for you? You over do just about every post you enter in the forum. Take a break man. Sit this one out.

Yes, it is comparable. They are both organized competitions where the usage of a particular tool is unnecessary to compete, is unequally available to all participants, and confers a major advantage. In both cases, for the same reasons, allowing such a tool to be used by only the subset who have access to it will likely invalidate the results, due to an un-level playing field, and undermines the whole point of running a competition in the first case. In both cases, this is bad for both the participants and the organizers.

Thus, in both cases, it makes sense to disallow the usage of that tool, for the benefit of both the organizers and the participants. Which the teacher has quite logically done.

Two situations don't necessarily have to match in scale or importance to be analogous and comparable.
 
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Competitive photography is stupid.

Maybe we should just leave it at that.
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I guess my desire for defined rules speaks more to my inexperience in this area. Unfortunatley I've left it too long I think to go through the posts and reply to each one, but each of your points and comments have been considered.

It gave us a chance to have a chat about previsualisation, getting it right in camera and kept editing to a few basic adjustments. I put on my Dad head and gave her the basic technical information she might need and let her play with the application of it to get her concept and vision across
 

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