Ethics in photography

Back during my senior year of college, I wrote my senior thesis on Ethics in newspaper photography. I thought it was a really good paper, and it was actually fun to write. However, my mind wanders a little bit sometimes and I find myself wondering about photoshopping pictures that I take. Cleaning up things here and there to improve them, editing out unsightly flaws... is that really unethical?

In this picture, I did clean up some things that were very distracting. Right at the gator's tail, there was an out of focus flower. It was a bright yellow thing and with the dark color in the rest of the background, it immediately drew your eye. So, I shopped it out. Was that unethical? Or was it simply cleaning up the scene of an artistic sight?

News photography is one thing... Those images are meant to convey truth, so if they are edited in such a way to change the meaning, that is very much unethical. But what about just artistic images? I'm trying to show things to people in a different light, a different view, but am I bound by the same ethics and morals that news reporters and photographers are? If I edit my pictures, am I lying to my audience? What happens if I do lie to them? Is there any kind of repercussion?

The internet and the digital revolution has changed our lives in many ways. And photography is certainly one area. Before, if it was "photographic evidence," there was no question that whatever was in that image was exactly what happened. Now, every image we see, we have to be prepared to question. Photoshop - and the ensuing skill that people develop with it - has put a twist on our perception. We can make James Dean dancing with an alien in the White House if we so desire. The ease with which people can manipulate images - and one might say, our perceptions - is almost frightening.

But back to my question. Are amateur and hobby photographers held to any sort of moral or ethical code? Should we be concerned if we edit our pictures to reflect something that was not there? Not necessarily creating an entire scene from scratch, but just enhancing colors or cleaning up that stick that was in the way... What does it hurt? Are we lying to ourselves and our audience? Or should we let our unadultered image speak for us instead.. And stop relying on our computers to tell the story our lens should have done in the first place...