The Desert of the Unreal...

The blogger at Leicaphilia has been on a well-written tear lately about the shredding of photography's almost unique position as an art form that was also archival, documentary.

Nowadays we have this photo of Chuck, taken with an EOS 5D Mark II and an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens...

Now, that digital image was captured in RAW format and run through minimal post-processing. Basically I employed the auto lens correction button and auto light/level balance button to the RAW image in Photoshop to get a .jpeg for internet use.

But one of the most common ways for people to consume photos these days is Instagram, which has a dozen or so preset filters, including one that mimics the look of cross-processed film...

Now we have a digital approximation of a thing that has been manipulated in a way to approximate an actual analog capture of a thing that was processed mistakenly.

Now add a filter site like Prisma...

Photographic proof?
.