Apologies for the very late posting ( over a year late ). Somehow I missed your entry and have literally, just finished reading it now.

Thanks so much for a great posting. I thought it summed up beautifully many aspects of photography and also, how we interpret our world.

Take care.

Sometimes the color contrast gets in the way of seeing other more emotional contrast. For example, I have an image of 2 leaves one laying on the other. The leaf on the bottom is dark green and the one on top is yellow. Clear color contrast which is what drew me to take the picture. However, as I have thought about the image since having it printed I now see even more interesting contrasts.

One is the contrast of an evergreen plant to a plant that reacts to the seasons of the year. This relates fall is in the air and everyone reacts to the seasons.

Another is the humor that the bottom leaf is way bigger than the top leaf. The smaller leaf was dropped by a tall tree while the bigger leaf is on a shrub in the yard that is only 3 feet tall. Granted one needs to know a little more about the plants for this contrast, but I do so it works.

Anyway my main point is sometimes the obvious contrast of saturated (over saturated) colors is hiding a more emotional contrast.

Getting back to this image. Just a few short months ago I would have looked at this image and said why a picture of a little tiny strip of land? Now I look at the subtle color variances and they are beautiful to behold. But now I also see contrasts that would have eluded me a few months ago. Softness and hardness. Many (clouds) to one (island). Colorful (tones in the clouds) to dull (brown land). Motion to immovable. And I am sure there are more.

I hope to learn to shoot and appreciate things simply because they are pleasing to me but also hope to never loose interest in the events, places and people of life. What a world God has created.

I think over-saturated images are appraised more on the web because of the nature of the beast. It’s hard to get impact with a small real estate and most folks computer screens are anything but close to accurate as well. So the high-impact image often wins.

I agree that there are a lot of ‘forced’ images out there. Often badly edited, but usually by someone who is starting out in image making. Over saturation, high contrast images look very exciting to the newbie, but as we progress, we start to learn to appreciate the more subtle. Well, that’s my take on it.

As for vision, I think it takes time to get a personal style. Most of us have one, but don’t realise it to its full potential because we either lack confidence and end up feeling we have to look up to someone else’s work and copy it, or we’re not listening to ourselves.

I was merely discussing how some folks think images have to be about events, people they know or places they know. An image can be valid just because we find it pleasing.