Hey Steemers,
I want to share with you some "bad practices" to forget in photography. I will try to give you some arguments to explain why I think so if I do not want to appear for a con who believes to hold the ultimate truth!

credit photo : siavach

WARNING

Before I start my argument, I want to make it clear that I do not want to stigmatize anyone. This is well on my way of thinking and only engages me. It is politically correct to say: everyone has the right to love what he wants. All the tastes are in nature ... Art on the art of art : Art...blablabla
Good to be frank is what is already done. So I rather want to tell you: All bad tastes are in nature.
I do not want to start from a debate of tastes. The taste is something very personal.
I will try to show you that some practices, which many of people use, do not render service but then no service to your photos and especially that you have to use anothers that will arrive at the same, but sought with a more classy rendering !

Bad practices

If ou ask me what are the practices you consider to be "the evil"? I will reply :

• Partial desaturation
• Positive vignetting
• The sepia
• The enormous watermark
• Exaggerated saturation
• Excessive skin smoothing
• Tone mapping (HDR too high)
• Excessive negative vignetting
• The blur added

I will take as main example, the partial desaturation because I find it symptomatic of this problem.

So Siavach, why partial desaturation is evil?

Because it's a the most kitsch effect ! Have you seen any famouse photographers use it ? No. It is an effect that dates from a minimum of 30 years. It has been over-used and has passed to the kitsch side of the force.
Question of taste you will tell me. And no! Because it's a Simplistic effect! This will allow me to explain the difference between Simple and Simpliste.

The simple is often the most beautiful as well as there is a more complicated to do. Take the example of a circus artist or a mime. When you see his show, when you see him juggling, the bearer his partner and spin it in the air, it's so well done that it looks super simple to do. I feel like I can do it (juggling!) And yet behind it is the years and years and years of intensive practice to get to that level of natural. The most beautiful is when you do not feel the drive car is caught in the world of the artist, in his universe and no longer think at all technical side.
The simplistic one, is something that is accessible to anyone. Since the arrival of software such as Picasa or other, partial desaturation is within the reach of a child of 3 years. "Partial desaturation". Anyone can do it It's like Instagram! A square format, some automatic effects and everyone thinks himself a photographer. All this is simplistic.
OKAY ! Partial desaturation is not good but customers like it.
I will not go on the obvious : show what you like and what you want to do and that is what you will sell. From my 3 years of professional photography, no customer ever asked me for partial desaturation! Just because I never showed them.
Just because people love something is not necessarily good!
Look, There are many people who love Justin Bieber ...

Do these people really like a product, or is it because they were told that it was what they liked?
I like taking McDonalds as an example! Is it because McDonalds is good that we love to go there or is it because it's cool and we screw up thousands of ads per day on this subject since our birth? Is McDonalds really good? I will repeat the famous expression: It's good but it's not good!
Arce that not obviously McDonalds is anything but real food. It's simplistic food. It is a prefabricated taste to make you love it easily and make you come back. It is a simplistic taste in the mouth without any nuance. We do not eat a McDonalds, we take it. While for a few more money, you can go to a small restaurant next door also does burgers, take more time and enjoy real products carefully crafted and nuanced. If we were at a young age educated in the true food, the quality of music, movies...
Let us take another example : wine. I really do not know anything about wine. I like some wines, which I find really good. I would be given a bottle at 3000 euros, I'm not sure I would prefer. But what if I took lessons ? I spent a few dozen hours educating my senses to smell, to taste ... I may notice that the wine I adored is actually a piquette without any nuance in mouth with an extremely simplistic taste.

What are the reasons that photographers advance to make partial desaturation:

To bring out the subject of a photo, you can use a different white balance between your background and your subject, a slight saturation / desaturation, blur (shooting), a dark part and a light part ...

"It's nice" : there I do not know how to explain that no, it is not but then really not. It's as ugly and kitsch as the shadow of an alliance forming a heart on the binding of a book or the pictures of naked baby with a pink cap on the head!
It's fast to do and it does not require knowledge in Photoshop That's the problem. It is like those people who say they are purist of the photo because they do not retouch their photo at the exit of their box ... It is often because they do not know how to retouch or that they do not have Want to take the time to learn!

Good practices

There are two types of good practice: fashionable practice and universal practice.
How to differentiate them? You will know in a few years if what you do has taken a big blow of old or if it is still topical.
Of course, there can be beautiful uses of all the processes. But it is used by people who know what they are doing and who have integrated the taste and the beautiful universal.
Let's take the example of the third-party rule in the framing. If you center your subject very often you will say that your image does not work, that your subject is too centered, expresses nothing.
DO NOT CENTER is a rule you are given when you start. Can we say at that time : no but all the tastes are in nature, if I like to center, let me do.
I have never heard anyone say it. The rule of third parties is a rule respected for hundreds of years. And it must be acknowledged that it is sacredly useful and truthful. Does that prevent photographers from centering their subject matter? No, I am the first to do it excessively may be but I am the first to do it!
However I incorporated the rule of thirds, I understood why it existed, I understood that it was true and allowed me to no longer make mundane photos. I practiced it for years and now the framing has become for me instinctive, I will even say simple. And I can now concentrate on my subject. But is my subject really centered? Do my dozens of centered portraits are totally centered? no ! Most often as in this photo, the line of eyes is on the third line of the top and therefore gives a balance to my picture.

credit photo : siavach

Partial desaturation is used 99.9% of the time only by beginners (or people of bad taste). By people who have not yet incorporated the rules that hundreds of years of art evolution have allowed to fix to help us. They arrive in the photo world saying: I like it so it's good. No !

Conclusion

To conclude and to contradict myself, I would say that there is no the evil as I said at the beginning. There are just bad uses of the available's tools.
some people saying that a photo that requires more than 5 minutes of treatment is a missed photo. I want to say the opposite. A photo that we process in less than 5 minutes and a photo of which we have not extracted the full potential. And the problem of most of the effects listed just before is that they are realized in less than a minute for many and therefore easy and simplistic.
These techniques are used without real know how and without subtlety. The real and the beautiful is very often in the work, the mastery and the experience. And that does not happen in 5 minutes.
And I remain convinced that we can use partial desaturation, positive vignetting, tone mapping to make nice pictures.
On the other hand the negative clarity is really the evil :-)

If you still practice this kind of effect, look at your photos, take a step back, a real setback, I mean. Close your eyes and reopen them and ask if your treatment is simple or simplistic. If he serves the photo, if it is subtle.
Ask if your treatment is current and if it will still be in 15 years.
The whole thing is to understand why we have to try something else. Think true emotion and not prefabricated emotion. Be subtle and use techniques with gentleness and without abuse.

And if after all this argument, give me your opinion, we can continue the debate!