OH, SB! How can you?
We've had several tiresome and lengthy discussions already that seemed to me to establish that "veracity" is vital only in the fields of photojournalism or scientific photography, where creativity should never get in the way of truth. But in "creative" photography, pretty much anything goes (such as in Rhein II 
.)...
Eric,
What I wrote was in the context of removing or not the logo, and thus not much to do with those discussions. In that sense, veracity is the crucial element in defending the logo, the symbolism of which Rob already explained. Without the logo, it's just a truck and much of that symbolism is gone.
Also, my impression was that Russ was not trying to make a Fine Art piece or another Rhein II. If yes, then, of course, anything goes, and not only the logo but the whole truck can be replaced by, say, a flying saucer.
What I see instead is a genre-spanning photograph, mixing landscape, documentary, travel, and road-trip photography. The documentary part in it is the one that is more related to veracity.
Simply speaking, the image as-is speaks
to me much more than any other manipulated variation of it, without the logo, road signs and/or truck itself or any combination of those. As I said, veracity
tends to have a virtue of its own, and it does (for me) in this picture. I am not saying one can not or should not manipulate, I am not saying one can not or should not depart from documentary into creative. All I am saying is that, for
this picture, sticking to what really was works and has a virtue of its own (again, the symbolism that Rob explained).
