In the bleak mid-autumn.

It's interesting, keeping up with photography trends. Back when I first decided to really focus on my own photography, around 2010, it was ultra-trendy to give pics of people and places a vintage look in post-processing. By 2014 the look was closer to matte in vintage tones; now we have an emergence of the film look imposed onto digital photos. I've enjoyed it all!

I will note the heinous HDR fad, in full force by 2010, which placed a high emphasis on bringing up the shadows so that the entire photo had essentially the same exposure level. The problem with HDR processing (which, in basic form, requires taking at least two photos (but up to six or seven) of the exact same scene using different exposure levels, and then blending them together in post-proc) was that it so often gave the finished product a painterly look at very best, and a hellish cartoon appearance at very worst.

And photogs loved it. The weirder the HDR, the better for some of them. It was about doing something new (as all fashion is), rather than faithfully rendering a scene. No true scene - especially in nature where the majority of HDR work was focused - is without shadows. And as time wore on, the fad wore out; full-frame DSLR cameras became sophisticated enough to capture enough detail in the highlights and shadows of a scene that you can now simply adjust them in Lightroom or Photoshop (without the shitty HDR look). And, as fashion always does, the trend swung back to including both light and shadow in photos once again, but this time using new processing techniques to an overall greater effect.

But this post isn't about HDR; I just had to bash it real quick because I hated it so much and I'm glad it met its demise.

Mingo Falls

Since I mostly follow professional photographers on Instagram, I've noticed the film trend for about a year now. The funny thing about vintage and matte and film presets is that until very recently, I think it was pretty much frowned upon to use them on nature photography. But the influencers will not be silenced. And though I'm usually in favor of just processing the photo to where it looks the way it did with the naked eye, I can't help but be drawn to using the film look on my own recent stuff...

High Falls

Last month I road-tripped to Asheville, NC to photograph the fall color in the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains. Alas, the foliage schedule was completely off due to a rainy summer and very warm September, but since I know Murphy's Law is real, I planned to visit mostly waterfalls so that it wouldn't matter if the leaves had turned (and they hadn't).

So, I've been post-processing away on them for a few weeks now, and in that time stumbled upon a small photo company whose film presets package was at like a 90% discount so I bought it. The preset used in the photos in this post is called 'Aged Grit.' As you can see, its defining feature is taking the color green and turning it to the color yellow. *evil laugh*

Near Glen Falls

But I also will always say when I've processed a photo beyond the point that someone could achieve on their own without a preset or some other trick. I actually was hard at work figuring out the tone tweaking necessary to get the 'look' I was seeing on Instagram, till I realized they are using presets like the rest of us (even if they made the preset themselves, which I super respect).

Qualla, NC

That's enough unasked-for rambling from me. :)