500px "popular" photos

Looking through the 500px "popular" section, it seems that a lot of the photos (not all) seem to have a lot of post processing going on? A lot of the popular ones seem to have this surreal/HDRish (maybe?) kind of look to them. Is this the current popular trend?

To me, a lot of them seem to be over processed to the point of looking almost fake. I'm just curious as to other photographer's opinions on this topic? Is this what it takes to get a photograph noticed? To me, it seems that a lot of the photos would still be great if they just had normal processing.

Here's a random photo I just pulled from the first page of "popular" to illustrate my point:

http://500px.com/photo​/20682165?from=popular

Thoughts?

I'm not a huge fan of HDR in general, especially the over-cooked, hallucinatory-color images, but I guess it has appeal to a fair amount of people. I think a lot of times people rely on HDR as an attempt to bring visual interest to an image that was lacking it in the first place.

500px is more about 'images', than photographs, if that makes sense. There's some very, very talented photographers on the site, but most of what gets 'popular' is either scantily clad women, or heavily edited images. In many instances, I think the editing is the star of the image, not the actual photograph.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just the way it is over there.. not really that much different than Flickr, but Flickr has a much more broad base of users, so it's just not a large of percentage of the site.

Not much to be done about it I guess.. Just don't look if it bothers you

BrandonSi wrote in post #15373418
500px is more about 'images', than photographs, if that makes sense. There's some very, very talented photographers on the site, but most of what gets 'popular' is either scantily clad women, or heavily edited images. In many instances, I think the editing is the star of the image, not the actual photograph.

Definitely makes sense. I agree with what you're saying.

BrandonSi wrote in post #15373418
Not much to be done about it I guess.. Just don't look if it bothers you

Doesn't bother me; just something I'd been thinking about so thought it might be good discussions. Hell, I consider myself an "enthusiast" at best who's still learning so even with the over-cooked processing, my images still wouldn't be "popular." At this point, I'm content with learning and just snapping photos of my daughter and other things that strike my interest.

People like different, trendy, and fads. Not that these types of photos will still appeal as "good" or timeless in 20 years. They will look dated.

Its different and fun, I think its good. Photography should always be changing, art is boring if its always the same. With that said, you can never go wrong with the classics in any discipline.

Well put, Brandon!