You are twisting my words to create a straw man. I did not mention HDR or anything else that implies something that cannot exist in real-life - simply that human vision is different than film or digital vision for many reasons, not the least of which is contrast and color rendition. Actually, my digital work comes closer to what someone else might consider real-life than my film work.
But even so, what you are criticizing for color work would be applauded for B&W work. Putting digital cameras aside, highly manipulated B&W images hardly resemble real life. Indeed there are many traditional photographic techniques that render a scene that is far from real life (say, long exposure techniques for example). Photographers like Michael Kenna, Brian Kosoff, Cole Thompson, and Chip Hooper (to name a few) create what I consider to be really beautiful photographs, but their photos hardly resemble the actual scene. Take their film away, and give them a digital camera and Photoshop, I bet they would create images that look very similar to their film images. Yes, the tools are important, but it is the artistic vision that separates them form the pack. The camera is just a tool.
I think you need to focus more on what you get gratification from, and spend a lot less time worrying about how other people get gratification. If you are truly curious about how I get gratification form using a tool like Photoshop, I am happy to share. But I sense that you really just have an axe to grind.
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