You are perfectly correct in your posting. I suspect everybody who posts or even looks at the photos posted here might say the very same thing. This forum is made up of probably hundreds of people from around the globe who use different camera systems from the phone cameras up to 8X10 view cameras, $8000.00 rangefinder cameras to $50,000 medium format cameras and everything in-between. We all have our thoughts in mind of what makes a good art like photograph all the way down to what makes our grandchildren or pets look nice in a simple snapshot. That is the diversity of photography and nobody should want or expect it to be any other way. Who is to say that your vision of a photographic scene is any better than my vision of the very same scene. Perhaps I want to bring out something in the shadows while you want to leave the shadows in darkness. So be it. There is room for us all. Post processing allows all of us to make changes in photographs that were not there when we took the picture. If you enjoy photos exactly as they came out of the camera then you have that option to simply leave it alone. Others though have different ideas that work for them.

Best to just allow people to be themselves and not try to change what is working for them to suit you.

Dennis

I think there's nothing more phony looking than a landscape with the sun shining brightly while all the rest of the picture is black and all the shapes are silhouettes which is simply due to the inability of either film or digital to capture the amount of light that was hitting the area at the time of exposure. Some of it is dramatic and very appealing for sure but not what existed or what I saw when I was there snapping the shot. If a black dramatic scene with the sun a mere excessively bright ball of light in the distance is what you want to capture, go for it but I kinda like to see what else was in the scene as it appeared to me when I took the shot, especially if it's a nice beach scene. There is rarely a situation where when the sun is visible in the sky that everything else in the scene appears to have been taken in the dark of night or any other scene to one degree or another where a little post processing can add back the realism I saw or knew was in the scene which is especially true when one is forced to shoot in the dreaded mid-day sun where all the colors you know are there are washed out and it takes very little to restore the realism a scene deserves.

The inherent limitations of our cameras to capture what was in the scene is no reason for us to go limp and yield to the deficiencies when we have the ability to do something about it. I choose to live in an area that has high impact visual properties and I've have spent a fair amount of time and money for equipment to capture that natural beauty and there's no stinkin' way I'm going to bust my chops out in the woods and come home with shots of wildlife and wilderness washed out by bad light when I can pop an image in an editor and make it like it would have been if the light had been better with just a couple of clicks of the mouse. No way will I consent to being a helpless dumb-a$$ victim of the short-comings of a limited mechanical device that cost way too many bucks. However, for what you choose to do, I have no opinion if you're happy with what you do.

You are perfectly correct in your posting. I suspect everybody who posts or even looks at the photos posted here might say the very same thing. This forum is made up of probably hundreds of people from around the globe who use different camera systems from the phone cameras up to 8X10 view cameras, $8000.00 rangefinder cameras to $50,000 medium format cameras and everything in-between. We all have our thoughts in mind of what makes a good art like photograph all the way down to what makes our grandchildren or pets look nice in a simple snapshot. That is the diversity of photography and nobody should want or expect it to be any other way. Who is to say that your vision of a photographic scene is any better than my vision of the very same scene. Perhaps I want to bring out something in the shadows while you want to leave the shadows in darkness. So be it. There is room for us all. Post processing allows all of us to make changes in photographs that were not there when we took the picture. If you enjoy photos exactly as they came out of the camera then you have that option to simply leave it alone. Others though have different ideas that work for them.

Best to just allow people to be themselves and not try to change what is working for them to suit you.

Dennis

I am not going to read all 8+ pages of responses to my ramblings. What I will say, and let me make this perfectly clear, I did not say I was opposed to any and all PP. At the moment, I don't have any PP software.
I have a chromebook, and there is precious few real good PP programs for it. Unless I'm missing something. I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with anyone doing it. I will probably get into it at some point in the not too distant future.

The point of my posting was NOT to start others ranting at me for supposedly putting others photographers down because they choose to enhance thei work. I saw the sample shots that Burke posted as an example of light handed proccessing. I will be the first to admit that the second shot WAS a bit more appealing. however, if he had not offered up the second image,I would have enjoyed the original.
I have seen some scenic shots posted here and thought, damn, if I'd had the opportunity to be in the same place, would I be capable of producing an equally stunning photo?
Then I think, did that scene actually look that stunning? or was there some editing of it to give it a broader appeal? Either way,I still enjoyed what I was looking at.

There is nothing wrong with editing photos. I don't care if someone wants to make their work look like a cartoon. All fine and well. Some folks would look at picaso and see a visionary. Others would see a mad man. I would fall under the later. All that being said, Stop reading this blather ,pick up your camera and go make some art. It's all good.

when I view some of the posts that are put up on the hog, many of them are very nice,some are outstanding, and some are just too over prossessed.

Now this is just my humble opinion.

Some of the posts are just too evenly lit,every shadow detail is available, trees and mountains are all just picture post card perfect. Now I have been around enough to know that scenic opportunities are rarely ,if ever perfectly illuminated. So...my thought is, am I the only one who is satisfied with capturing a given scene SOOC ?

I often shoot my scenics with both eyes open with the thought of capturing in camera exactly what is before me, or as close as I can get it given the broad spectrum of light falling on a given vista.

I'm afraid that there is so much PP of everything ,that what we all are exposed to now are all just personal renditions of what is or was actually there. Some post are so perfectly PP'd, that they take on the apperance of a lithograph rather than a photograph.

Example: taking a picture of the sun will always render the rest of the scene whofully under exposed, yet I see shots with the sun as evenly lit as the surrounding landscape. Yes, there are times when it is possible to shoot a sun scene and have some forground or backround lit. But not evenly. I have tried. something has to give.

I feel like a lone wolf trying to capture what I see as it is, while many are manipulating their shots to render them more perfect or "pleasing" to the eye.

With so much pp going on, it's very hard to know what is real anymore.

Just my observations and ramblings.