It is that time of year, when visitors to the desert rhapsodize about red sunsets. Here is my contribution:
I didn't deliberately do anything to enhance the colors, and yet it didn't look this red in real life. The lying cheating camera added the color. Even the cameras of the world have now been programmed to shoot for the maximum number of hits and clickbait income. Sigh.
Most people probably run their sunset photos through the editing software and then scream about how red the sunset is. Who do they think they are fooling? Hell, these days, you could take a picture of dog crap and then edit it into blazing red.
There was a time when a red sunset was impressive and real; when a Jimmy Buffet song said, "Sunset is an angel weeping...holding out a bloody sword." No longer. I started losing faith in photography ten years ago when photo editing took over.
For an analogy, consider when I was shopping for cars a few years ago. I had done a lot of homework and had gotten more adept at industry jargon. At a car dealer's lot, a female salesperson starting walking towards me. From the other side of the lot, she literally took my breath away. But as she got closer, I thought, "Hey, wait a minute. How much of her is "OEM" equipment and how much is after-market parts?"
Is this an advertisement for puritanism? Is it evil to enhance photos, wear makeup, or add spices to food? Clothes are an artificial affectation -- does that mean I should become a nudist? Beards are natural, so why do I shave every day?
Was Mozart a fraud for using the new musical instrument of his day, the pianoforte? Maybe anything other than the human voice or banging on a drum is "fake."
People still want to think that 'seeing is believing.' I guess they don't know that most actress and actors are wearing wigs or hair extensions in the movies they watch. When John Wayne gallops falls off a horse at breakneck speeds, it never occurs to them that a stuntman is doing the job.
Much of entertainment is based on a 'willing suspension of disbelief.' If the story-teller or photographer becomes too overt with their tricks, the viewer will become unwilling. Maybe photo-editors need to remember that.
If photographers won't discipline themselves, all is not lost. Real photography -- the kind that actually does 'tell a story,' will not be degraded by photo-editing tricks.
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