Photomanips Not Illustrations

I know that no one reads these posts but I feel this has to be said. I absolutely hate it when people post a photomanip and refer to it as an illustration, that they "drew" it or even "doodled" it. It's maddening! I like to refer to myself as an illustrator, sure I gather photos for my work, but I use them to base an original piece off of them, I don't throw it into Photoshop slap on a few filters and layers and call it an illustration.
Seriously, the way I see it an illustration refers to something that you put together entirely by yourself with your own hands either with traditional media or with digital media, not taking copyrighted photos putting them together and calling it a day. For one it's not all that original, second it's too damned easy to get away with.
I see an overwhealming amount of people on the internet nowadays doing photomanips and saying they're illustrators as opposed to actually getting out and doing real art. It's bad enough I see every young 'un out there drawing anime and saying they're a manga-ka and pretending to be a real artist without any REAL training ("Oh I watched Naruto and did some fanart so therefore I'm a manga-ka." Dudes, even the creators of those shitty anime had to have real training to be able to do what they do for a living, you guys might benefit from doing the same). I take it as an insult when I see someone at school winning some award for a piece of crap they think is brilliant when clearly there wasn't any substance to it.
Anyway to put it bluntly,some photomanipulators need to learn the line between real illustrations and photomanipulation, there's a category for it, USE IT!

New Work, New Photos

It's been a loooong time since my last post, and a lot of things have happened. If people reading this have caught up with my journals on Deviantart and LiveJournal, then you know about the car accedent I was in on the 27th of July coming back from my last Comic Con trip.

Right now I think is a good time to post some of my more recent work though. When I can I'll post the comments I recieved on the portfolio review at Comic Con as well as photos from the con itself.