Let me start by saying that this is not part of my descent into madness after being cooped up for almost 6 weeks (and being sick some of the time), but the thoughts you’ll read here have been formulated and matured during this period. How and why you may ask - let me tell you.
During the past six weeks I’ve devoted more time to looking at images - in Facebook, Instagram, pretty much everywhere. As a travel photographer, my focus naturally shifted more to images of far away places and people, of cultures I have either personally experienced or want to visit as soon as this madness is finally over. Or that’s what I wanted to do. As I looked a terrible, horrifying, ugly, useless and, frankly, disturbing trend became obvious: most of the images (I would dare to estimate it at around 70%) were so horribly processed they no longer bore any resemblance to the people or places they claimed to represent.
Now, before the eyebrow raising and shakes of disapproval start, please bear with me a little - let me explain.
Images have been processed since the dawn of photography - even the most die-hard street photographer or film aficionado, more often than not, make creative choices about how to interpret the images they captured. This can be as simple as pushing or pulling the film sensitivity or cropping, others may extend to dodging and burning and more. These techniques - which are by no means simple - have resulted in the amazing pictures the previous analogue generations have bequeathed us. Jump to today and what do we find? Let’s see:
cropping to 1/100th of the original frame, leaving little to no resolution for the image to be even remotely clear
artificial bokeh, 99 times of 100 done so atrociously badly to make the “subjects” look like joke cutouts
contrast and clarity pushed so far to turn the image into a digital edging of itself
vignetting so horrible that you feel you’re looking through a tube of toilet paper
saturation enhanced so much to make images look as if they were painted by 5-year olds
falsely painting everything surrounding the “subjects” black to kill everything environmental because it does not play well with your sense of “portraiture”.
Oh, and most times all the above is combined.
You may - as many do - that these are “creative choices” by the photographer but this is where I actually completely and utterly disagree. Not because I’m a purist, but because in travel photography there is such a thing as faithful representation, truth and honesty. Otherwise we’re talking about digital art and there, sure, go nuts, do whatever you want - all is permitted, including replacing the sky, adding Photoshop swirls and everything in-between. But when you claim to present a picture of a faraway tribe or of a market seller in the streets of Calcutta, then reality matters. It matters a lot!
Turning a picture of a busy street scene, shot in the middle of the day, under harsh sunlight, with a 200mm lens from across the street into a sensitive portrait of an old lady selling her mangoes by massively cropping (and the massively sharpening), darkening the image so it looks as if is was shot during the golden hour, then adding 1000% clarity to give it an edge and even vignetting the heck out of it to try and focus the viewer’s eye creates something which is neither faithful to what you saw (and what is there) and, 9 times out of 10, a really crappy image. Removing a striking Hamer woman from her natural habitat, amidst her family’s huts and artificially placing a background behind her so you can claim this is an intentional, setup portrait is equally fake and, frankly, wrong.
The sad thing is that, most of the times, the original image would have been 100 times better - it would have provided texture, context, reality, a true window into the place and the people the photographer visited and provided all us viewers with ideas, concepts and the desire to travel, to be there. Falsified and isolated, turned into a bizarre version of “professional photography” catering to the latest Facebook and Instagram trends, an otherwise good image becomes, well, nothing. Just something to attract “likes” from friends and everyone who does pretty much the same.
In case you’re still not convinced, here’s an image it took me less than 30’’ to find. Let’s analyse it - leaving aside the fact the submitter classifies him/herself as a “Visual storyteller”:
clearly cropped from a much larger image - the quality shows it clearly
almost all surfaces have had a kind of a swirl effect applied to them to make them look older/more authentic
clarity has been pushed, most likely, through 2-3 layers, to way beyond anything imaginable
shadows and highlights have been butchered beyond anything resembling normality
and still, tens of people loved it and even praised the “amazing” post-processing skills.
Now, I get it - it’s absolutely okay to like it. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and this is absolutely okay and showing that like to the artist is also perfectly okay. But you cannot claim this is travel photography or storytelling because, well, it is neither. It’s digital art and, if I were to travel to this place what I would see is NOT this. If I were to expect to see this, I would be disappointed and lost.
But there is more and this, I feel, is more a blow to the very principles of photography than all the above put together. Rather than tell you, I invite you to provide some well meant criticism to ANY such image. Any comment will do. You’ll instantly become the recipient of such massive denial, criticism, argument it will remind you of even the worst political argument. Phrases ranging from “that’s my decision, I like it, you can leave” to outright denials of even the most obvious things will fly past you faster than you can close the browser window. Some will become rude and even threatening, others will block you, other will initiate a spam war and so on. By the way, by all means, try any and all approaches - be the nicest person in the world, be nasty and critical, be anything you want - the result will be the same. Because people no longer want to discuss or learn - the moment they gather 50-100 likes they automatically deem themselves masters and nothing anyone can say will ever mean anything to them.
So, coming back to the beginning, to how we started this: stop this! Don’t do it because you’re only detracting from your hard work. You could only capture the image amidst the chaos? that’s what makes it worthy, not the massive processing you can pile on to it! Your image is grainy - fantastic! Why smooth it to the point where it looks plastic? That old lady does not have the perfect wrinkles you’d like her to have - adding clarity to make the appear so you betray her and her life and you’re turning her into something she’s not.
That’s it. Of course, those people who do fall on the above sins will never change - even if they read this post - but maybe, just maybe, this will generate some healthy debate. Let me hear your views!