Re: Enjoyed this
"Taking a photograph, the dynamic has really shifted from doing more than frame/expose with little more thought than that, then do most work post production whilst sitting on a computer playing with settings."
As a serious amateur landscape shooter this attitude infuriates me. I spend the best part of my time planning for location and weather, one shot took me close on 2 years and 3000 miles of driving back and forth to a location that was a 400 mile round trip in a single day each time, before I was happy with a shot. I personally do very little to my images in post other than a tweaking the tones and hues, I know how to use Photoshop and can happily kill an image with way too many effects but I don't want to spend any more time in front of the computer than I have to. I appreciate you're were making a generalisation about a lot of people with cameras but please don't lump us all in with that. Some of the best amateur landscapers in the country spend 75% of their time planning, studying and travelling before a shutter is even pushed, let alone time in front of a computer.
"The good thing is, it allows you to be lazy when taking the shot. The bad thing is, it allows you to be lazy taking the shot. Even now, with the plethora of images thrown at us, a good, well composed image that catches the eye, can tell a story or, and this is the hardest part especially in landscapes, conveys the feeling of being there still stands out from the rest."
Sadly you are very right on this part. While there a lot of us out there spend hours planning and executing a shot, there are a lot of people out there who simply shoot every sunrise, crank up the colour and contrast in post-processing, upload to 500px and then sit back and watch the hits roll in a like a torrent simply because their image has tons of orange/red/pink in it but when studied later on the images often have very little true substance to them.