Digital Manipulation is Ruining Color Photography for Me

Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone National Park, WY

My images live  here.  I would appreciate you taking a look.  Thanks.

I started seriously making photographs in color in 1970.  I started in color as I had no way to process black and white film and make prints.  I only had access to developing and printing through camera shops, etc.  I enjoyed my photography and, more often than not, was disappointed with my rudimentary efforts of creating nice images.  But, overall, I truly fell in love with photography.  As much as I loved it I was more or less taking snapshots as I had no control over the process (outcome).

Later, as my interest grew, I gorged myself on every photographic book and resource I could find to learn more about photography.  I started to really admire black and white photography.  As time went by, I decided to build a darkroom  in part of my garage at my home.  That is when I really jumped into black and white photography--with both feet, so to speak.  As I have written in the past, I learned the Zone System, all kinds of alternative processes, archival processing and printing, etc.  I had found true joy in photography as what mattered to me most was the entire chain of events--the entire process from start to finish--from finding an interesting subject all the way through the taking, developing, processing, mounting, framing and hanging the image on a wall.  I loved every bit of it.

I still dabbled in color photography and even bought equipment to process and mount slides.  I loved Kodachrome but Ekatchome allowed me to be more involved in the process.  There was no way to home process Kodachrome but Ektachrome was the relatively easy E-4 then E-6 process.

Jump to today's digital world.  I love digital photography even more than film photography.  I would never go back.   Digital has opened the doors for millions of individuals who want to take picture and make images.  What a wonderful effect digital has had.  The equipment is so good and so automatic, that even a newbie can take some wonderful pictures.

Here is where I am increasingly having an issue, especially with color digital photography.  When I look at color images on the web, they are so colorful, so good, so detailed, have such a long dynamic range, that they no longer look real and no longer reflect almost any reality of the scene.  They look perfect!  PERFECT!  That is fine, but, for me, they are too good.  Too good?  How can that be.

Most of the color images I see on Google+ and other sites, such as 500 PX almost look like paintings in the style of realism.  They just don't represent photography to me.  I find myself glancing at them and moving on as I have lost interest in these beautiful pieces of art.  They are too good.  To perfect in every way.  It is with black and white also, but to a lesser extent.  Moreso with landscape photography than with street photography.  I find myself being disenchanted with these highly manipulated color images.  As beautiful as they are, I hardly give them a look anymore.

Don't mistake the fact that I am guilty of doing the same.  Some of my images have lost the look of reality.  But I'm getting away from that now.  Now, to a  much lesser extent, than in the past.  I think an analogy is when HDR first arrived everybody tried it, most overdid it and now things have settled down to where most HDR is very realistic in appearance rather than over cooked.  I'm hoping the mainstream digital color photography goes that way also.  Color images for the most part, are over cooked.

In the mean time, I am thinking about, again, concentrating and spending my energy going the way of black and white as it is mostly not affected by this phenomenon, except when it is.  But less so.

Almost all of my favorite images made over the last 100 years are far from perfect.  None are highly manipulated.  Some are.  W. Eugene Smith manipulated his more than other photographers, but they look un-manipulated.  Some are off color (think Kodachrome in the 1940s), some are not really sharp, some have too much contrast or very little contrast .  And--that is one of the aspects of the images that make them my favorites.  I don't like perfect photographs.  I don't like over cooked images that are too colorful, have too much detail, have too much dynamic range and too perfect!

What do you think?  Do the plethora of gorgeous, over processed, perfect color images still hold your interest?  They don't hold mine anymore.



Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook


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