A worry

[willperrett]

Hi all
As I trawl through the images on Trek Earth, I am in awe of the quality of so much of the work that is submitted: clearly that's why I joined. However, am I alone in noticing a tendency towards the more popular images being increasingly "dramatic"? I don't mean in subject matter particularly, but in contrast and colour saturation. I see a lot of images which seem to have been through the Photoshop mill, to increase saturation, sometimes to very obvious and unrealistic levels, in the belief, apparently, that they will look better, more impressive, score more points.... And it seems to work: the critiques usually praise the photograph, when to my (jaundiced? cynical?) eye they would be better if they were more "natural". I know the word natural is fraught with difficulty in this context (is a black and white image "natural"?), but the world is seen by our eyes in colour, and I would prefer images to tell the truth! The problem is made more acute by the easy availability of imaging software; the sadness is that the photographs really shot in breathtaking conditions of light and drama are tending to get lost, and I never know these days if the image has been tweaked and pushed or whether the scene was really like that. Maybe it doesn't matter: good post-production editing has always happened and why not make a good photo better? But Photoshop and its like (which I use all the time) needs to be used with knowledge and finesse if it is to be a tool which really enhances a picture. I feel that Trek Earth exists to promote the grand tradition of Documentary Photography, and the point is to "document" the world, not change it to make it look "better" or worse, unrealistic.
Any thoughts?
Will