Can you tell the sex of the photographer from the image?
I'm wondering about this question following the Meet at Tintern on Saturday. Looking at the images taken by the others, who were all male, I get the feeling of some testosterone in their photos as compared to mine.
For many people their photography has been entirely on digital equipment, which in some ways enables the opportunity to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear! Flat light and non-existent skies - no problem! Whack up the contrast and saturation to unrealistic levels and call it **HDR. I'm not a fan of HDR, and I'm not suggesting that the images taken on Saturday by my friends fall into this category, but they did get me thinking as did the conversations we had about equipment etc as we walked.
My experience of colour printing in a darkroom and understanding of the dynamic range of film, transparency, paper etc gives me a different perspective. My mantra for photography is "Get it right in the camera", at least as much as possible. Apply a minimum of editing and produce an image that is satisfying in its own right and realistic.
Anyway, back to the testosterone - its good to have around because its actually quite motivational and inspirational at times - at least photographically :-)
**Yes, I do know that isn't how you produce HDR pics, and I'm not discounting all HDR, its just like everything else - the bad attempts can give the whole genre a bad name.
