Green is becoming an endangered color.
The variety of blues in nature are dwindling.
Whatever happened to NATURAL…….color?
Photographers are getting LAZY, and they’re hiding their inability to capture GREAT color, with easy filters.
“There is no green in your photographs.”….
A photographer came to me last week, and asked me to look at her work. I looked through a dozen shoots, and at her “best of” gallery, and said…
“Well….starting about a year ago, you have NO green whatsoever in any of your photographs.”
She disputed that, pointing to trees and plants and a dress….so I opened those files in editing software, used an eyedropper tool to sample the colors, and to her complete shock, NONE of the leaves in ANY of her recent images were GREEN.
They were gold and brown. Some of them were more red than green.
Here’s what’s happening, and there is an incredibly important lesson in this, that a lot of photographers will never hear, and some will hear but ignore.
Photographers, for a variety of reasons….but often because they’re insecure in the value of their compositions, natural style, etc, are FILTERING THE LIVING FUCK out their images.
They’re dark, they’re brown, they’re low contrast, they’re blah.
And because that style is IN right now…….some people love them.
But let’s all remember….sometimes people love CLUNKY SHOES. Sometimes people love
CAPRI PANTS. Sometimes people think a BUMPIT is a cool hair style choice.
Some styles are TIMELESS. Think little black dress or blue jeans and a white shirt. Many styles are transient….meaning, they become popular for a while, then we look back and think “what the hell, why was I wearing that obnoxious PRINT?”
That’s the problem with filtering all the images to shades of gloomy, dim, dark, BROWN.
We had the same problem for YEARS with ORANGE and TEAL. You still see a lot of photographers turning every single blue in every single picture to the SAME shade of indigo or teal, erasing the uniqueness of their customers wardrobes and personal choices.
We have the same problem for more than a decade with LIGHT AND AIRY….but at least with light and airy, people don’t seem to get tired of it. The problem though, is when photos go from being IN THE MOMENT to being IMPORTANT MEMORIES, people will want to remember how their children ACTUALLY LOOKED.
I promise you, in ten years people will want to know how their wedding ACTUALLY LOOKED.
So many photographers today are turning every single skin tone to the EXACT SAME SHADE. People aren’t individuals anymore. No one has their own character.
One photographer makes every person dark brown, surrounded by dark brown things and dark brown plants and dark brown skies.
The next makes everyone pale white….even African skin tones get washed to pale.
The next makes everyone ORANGE.
Everyone. ORANGE!
The two massive problems with this, are ONE, styles go OUT of style…and what you like or even LOVE today, you may find puzzlingly TERRIBLE when you look back in ten years.
“OMG, all my pictures are just a dark, gloomy, brown mess.”
This will be WORSE with the dark, gloomy, brown mess filters, because the dark, gloomy, brown mess filters are actually TERRIBLE. Not just subjectively bad, they’re OBJECTIVELY bad.
And the second problem is, we’re erasing individuality. Instead of 20 families that have their own, unique look and style, you have 20 families that all have the EXACT SAME dark, gloomy, brown mess style.
What we’re gaining, is a lazy path to quick attention. You can take mediocre images and wash them all in the same load and everything comes out coffee tones, and people TODAY go “ooooh, nice.”
Because it’s FASHIONABLE.
Like when we thought RAT TAILS were fashionable.
It’s not creativity. It’s laziness. And if you’re not ALSO giving the customer REAL colors, natural colors, in other files, you are….
…..and I’m gonna be blunt here.
RIPPING THEM OFF.
Filtering images is EASY. Creating sharp, color-accurate, well lit and composed images is HARD.
Not giving them the HARD stuff first, before you lazily filter everything BROWN, is lazy, and it’s a timebomb, because in a decade, when they look back on the images they paid for….
…there is a very real chance they’ll hate them.
And there won’t be anything they can do about it.
If you give someone SHARP, COLOR-ACCURATE, WELL LIT images, they can always filter them into dark, gloomy, brown messes…
….OR, you could give them dark, gloomy, brown messes as ALTERNATE looks in a separate set of files……but if you give people dark, gloomy, brown messes, and that’s ALL YOU GIVE THEM…
….they’re stuck with…
DARK, GLOOMY, BROWN MESSES FOREVER.
“Creative presets are NOT CREATIVE. They’re lazy. And they’re TIMEBOMBS because people are going to look back at an important part of their lives one day, and NOT have color-accurate photos.”
This photo below is NOT ADDING VALUE….
UNLESS….the photographer is ALSO giving you THIS file:
But the reality is….a lot of the time the photographer isn’t giving you that first, dark, brown, gloomy file to be CREATIVE…they’re doing it to hide the fact they don’t know HOW to create the SECOND FILE.
And in a few years, when you’re completely EXHAUSTED from looking at your memories as dark, gloomy brown messes…..you’re going to be OUT OF LUCK.