Digital restraint

Look at the photo at the top of this post. I took it using my little Ricoh GRIII. I then opened it in Lightroom and sent it to Silver Efex Pro, where I clicked a preset and saved it. It was easy, and I didn't feel like I was doing anything crazy with it. And yet, it's wildly over-processed.

I look at photographs from other people every day, and most of them are overdone. No sky ever looked like that. Where'd the shadows go? Her skin must be plastic.

Digital photos look too digital, so I like to try and make them look less digital. What most people mean by less digital is "more like film". I guess that's the only option, since if it's not digital, what else could it be?

When trying to mimic film, it's too easy to end up with nonsense like this:

That's not what I mean by "less like digital". I guess what I mean is that I want photos to look less processed. I want less computer in my pictures.

This is why I like film. With film, I scan it, then I might tweak the curve/contrast, crop and straighten, and that's it. There's not much else to do. It helps that I like how film looks by default.

It's difficult for me to keep edits subtle when shooting digital. Restraint is hard to come by when all I need to do is click a button and I get all the "Pop!" one could ever want. It's gross.