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Let me open by saying, images like the one attached to this post irritate my aesthetic sense on an almost mechanical level. The hypersaturated colors, oversharpened textures and unrealness of it all is like gravel against my corneas. But it occurred to me *why* he does this, and it has a lot to do with the early digital culture he got his start in.
When Ken was getting his start, the world was firmly entrenched in traditional photography, but the goal wasn't exactly hyper-realism. In the early days of color movies and films, the emphasis was on bright, punchy, unrealistic images. Think Wizard of Oz. If you look at art history, it's the same sort of disconnect. Bierstadt hangs in the halls of Congress, and his works are often cited as inspiration for the existence of national parks.
In the early days of digital photography, for the first time, it was possible for digital processing to achieve unreal effects and eye-watering color saturation with a simple workflow. People were used to realistic photographic rendering, and computers achieved a totally new kind of perspective that was incredible in its day. Ken, with his background in technology, was uniquely situated to shape and capitalize on that new aesthetic. Now, of course, we've had decades of HDR and oversaturated digital 'pop' and we're fucking tired of it. But time and again, more unrealistic images tend to attract more attention from the masses. If you have an eyewash station nearby and can handle looking at Ken's work for a bit, there's actually some rigor in it. He's careful to avoid color banding and preserve texture, and there's a kind of artful balance to the beastly slider activity. He definitely can produce a balanced composition.
Where do you draw the line with signal processing? Do you only rely on the processing baked into the camera firmware and hardware, or do you adjust in post? Regardless of your opinion there, doing so is, and always will be, aesthetic work and therefore art.
