Is There Still Room for the Traditional Photograph?

www.dennismook.com

There is a nationally distributed photography magazine that is centered on landscapes, nature and other subjects, generally found out of doors.  I have subscribed to this particular magazine for many, many years because most of my images are landscapes and nature and I truly enjoy looking at other photographers' images and learning from them.  In the past several years, it seems to me, the way the magazine prints the images they publish, has changed.  I'm not sure on which planet many of the images were made, but I have been to many of the places that are shown through photographs and I have never seen the represented landscape look like the images published.  The images are way oversaturated, the tonal ranges have dramatically changed with lots of exaggerated detail in the highlights and shadows and the colors look literally, out of this world.  I don't think they really represent the places that are depicted.  At least not in reality.  Now, don't get me wrong, the photographs are spectacular!  Too spectacular, in fact.  They border, in my opinion, on photo illustration.  But that is okay as they art and the photographers are not photojournalists, wildlife photographers or documentary photographers who would be required to represent reality as reality.

Additionally, I notice that most of the images I see on the web are oversaturated and even garish and artificial looking.  I even see that in magazine advertisements.  That seems to be the overall trend.  I am guessing that is what the vast majority of folks want to see--oversaturated, extreme tonal range and highly manipulated.  Many times, I am guilty of this, but I always try to point that out to my viewer when I go overboard.  Try.  Conversely, reality seems to better serve my vision.

Is there room for the traditional image that we have seen for the past 75 years?  Especially color images.  The images of yesteryear were natural looking, sometimes with pastel or muted colors.  Even the bright colors were reasonable.  Kodak and Fuji spent millions and millions of dollars to create films that represented reality.  I can remember, when a new film was introduced, how proud those two companies were in their press releases on telling potential customers how natural the reds, blues, greens, skin tones, etc. were in this new release.  They would tout that "this new film has the most accurate colors of any film every made." 

It seems to me, the change started about the time Fujifilm introduced Velvia 50 in 1990.  That film was the first to be oversaturated, high contrast and fine grained.  Landscape and nature photographers loved it--at least many of them did.  It has been a slippery slope since.

When I look at many of my images from years ago, even from Kodachrome, they were not nearly as saturated or, as I like to say, overcooked.  Can a traditional landscape and nature photographer be commercially or artistically viable in today's market when making images that really look like nature?  I'm not sure.

I love the images of Elliott Porter.  They are beautifully delicate in texture and color.  Also, I love the images of Harold Mante.  Even though his colors are vibrant, they are not overly and artificially so.

I guess I went through the phase of printing and displaying images that were oversaturated and garish.  I guess I did because I never could manipulate them before digital came along.  In the old film days, there were no contrast or saturation adjustments in the darkroom for color images.  There were in black & white, but not color.  You got what you got.  You had to change films to affect the color and contrast.  Films were specifically made to reproduce skin tones accurately.  Films were made with a high contrast and lower contrast.  Velvia came along and gave us very saturated colors and high contrast in a slow slide film.  Today it is way too easy.  With digital, you can do most anything you want to an image.  But that doesn't mean it will improve it.  I guess it depends upon the photographer's final intent for the image.

I'm hoping, in the future, the trend will wane and we, as a photographic community, will get back to more realistic looking photographs.  Nature, without manipulation, is beautiful in and of itself.

Thanks for looking.

Enjoy!
Dennis Mook