Do you sometimes feel out of touch with popular photography?

[Sirius Glass]

I have never been a fan of over saturated photographs or photographs with digital artifacts. Nor have I ever been a fan of cheap cameras that are designed to have vignetting and light leaks.

 

[Black Dog]

upvote by 10+ please

Stick another one on that from me!

 

[Arcturus]

We are all inundated with over saturated and HDR photography now but all this is, is the photographer attempting to make the shots surreal. Most people don't want their pictures to represent "reality" but instead a hyper reality or a dream reality. We can bemoan this trend but almost all acclaimed black and white photography is also tarted up to do the same thing.

Ansel Adams photography was not what was there but was his vision of what the scene could be. All you have to do is look at his darkroom work to see that the over dramatization of the scene was his goal.

Look at some of the black and white on this site and you'll find the same thing. Surrealism of a scene.

When I look through the viewfinder I don't go, "oh this look nice", I go " lets see, I'll darken the sky, make the clouds more contrasty, burn in here, dodge here" etc etc.

Even color photographers of the past tarted up the saturation and "impact" of the shot.

So what we are seeing a lot of now, is not new. We are just seeing more of it because there are more photographers out there.

I actually think some of Adams' prints are overdone with the dodging and burning. Not that I'm a reputable art critic or anything, but I like my prints to be as true to life as I can get, which is why I might be out of touch with what most people like. And what is photography but making things that other people like to look at?

 

[blockend]

Many of my gripes have been the same for the last forty years. Praise for derivative landscapes, pictures of puppies, close ups of bugs by people who aren't entomologists. Photographs whose principal claim to fame is that they don't offend a single person or generate strong emotion of any kind. Miniature cameras with shutters that run at 1/500 sec upwards being used as though they're plate cameras. People obsessed with squeezing the last ounce from small negatives and sensors at diminishing financial and aesthetic returns. The obsession with grainless, noiseless images for their own sake. The reliance on pictures of brick walls to tell us anything meaningful about a camera's ability to record real life. The sycophantic relationship between camera manufacturers and magazines, including internet sites. I could go on. And on. And on....

 

[pdeeh]

Would you like the 'phone number for Dignitas?

 

[blockend]

Would you like the 'phone number for Dignitas?

I just zone the cr*p out nowadays. Still amazing that exemplars of modern photography resemble the pictures of 1975, '85, '95, 05. Give or take a little HDR.

 

[gleaf]

Totally, I'M to old to run after anything new...

 

[lxdude]

the undeservedly over praised besottedly canonized Kodachrome specialized in muddy and soot be-smudged skies.

Well, duhh! We live in Southern California, remember?

 

[Sirius Glass]

the undeservedly over praised besottedly canonized Kodachrome specialized in muddy and soot be-smudged skies.

Well, duhh! We live in Southern California, remember?

Those photographs were taken on the East Coast.