Radioactive?

Just looking at a few random posts of photos on Flickr.

I search under "architecture" and am always surprised at how off-topic so many of the posted photos are...sorry, mate....a photo of your girlfriend in a slip doesn't constitute architecture no matter how well she's built...I never search under "titties" but I wonder if there are pictures of buildings in there.

Reason that I post today is to address the disturbing trend of people using the "vivid color" setting on their cameras or doing HDR treatments of subjects that don't need it....and that's most of them.

I can see the vivid thing helping out on an overcast day BUT there's usually an adjustment for the setting buried deep in your camera menus....I'd suggest that you experiment with the settings so that you get a photo that's adequately punched up but isn't frickin' glowing....it's unnatural and disturbing. You might say that it's your idea of an artistic treatment but c'mon...who are you kidding?

Same business with HDR. HDR is a great idea...working in conventional photography (with film) I learned several techniques to either contract or expand the range of a photo so the final print gives the maximum detail in both highlight and shadow areas. There was this wonderful guy named Ansel Adams who worked out a whole empirical system for doing this and called it, cleverly enough, the Zone System. One thing that I've found over the years is that a lot of people toss that term, Zone System, around and have absolutely no idea what it really means...I encourage anyone who picks up a camera with any idea of doing anything serious to LEARN WHAT IT ACTUALLY MEANS....seriously....even if you have no intention of ever shooting any film or making a silver print it will give you a foundation that will help you make something that visually represents what you intended when you took the photo.

But back to HDR. I'm beginning to see that it's being recognized as a trend and a look that's becoming passe...we've been through those...high contrast, grain, soft focus...over the years there have been a lot of trends. I would, however, like to remind everyone that all trends have their place and when it comes to architectural photography in particular, HDR is a good thing if you don't overdo it. Please try to get that awful "radioactive" look out of the HDR shots...crank back the color saturation or something but tone it down so the viewer feels that he's looking at the subject and not a "treatment". Again, you could say that it's artistic but a really good photo doesn't need a gimmick to connect with a viewer.