digital editing — project blog — 10,000 Hours Photography

I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions - just because you make a resolution to do something differently doesn't mean squat. Habits are hard to change and willpower (like everything else that's worth having in this world) is a scarce resource. I did make a substantive change just today though - I started shooting in raw format and I'm never going back!!

For the past year and half, I shot exclusively in JPEG - a dumbed down, but commonly used image format for webpages, photo albums, and printing actual photos the world over. The problem is that when the camera converts images to JPEG, the files lose a lot of detail, particularly in the shadows. Keeping images in raw format preserves the details, but has to be processed in post and later converted to JPEG or some other friendly format. Previously in this project, I wanted to focus more on basics - composition and lighting, so I opted to lose some details for the sake of simplicity.

Now that I have a little more experience under my belt, particularly in the exposure department, I feel like I can begin to explore more with colors and post processing. Once upon a time, many moons ago, I had the displeasure of an introductory Photoshop class taught by a less than competent teacher - a burnt out software engineer type who shouldn't have ever been in the business of teaching. As a result of that haphazard class, Photoshop became more complicated and intimidating than it actually should have been. Granted, over the years, there have been significant improvements to the software available to process, organize, and edit photos.

Enter Adobe Lightroom. I was browsing for the latest version of Photoshop when I stumbled upon this amazing image workflow manager & basic retoucher. While it won't do the fine doctoring of Photoshop, this is probably more along the lines of what I need for the vast majority of the images I take... not to mention, it's a nice bridge to the intense editing. Also once upon a time, I had the incredibly naive attitude that great photographs should just come out of the camera that way, untouched. Perhaps because photography is frequently talked about in the context of capturing exactly what happened - what the eye sees. And yet, that isn't quite right since even the best camera sensor can't precisely replicate what the human eye sees. Photography is less talked about and viewed as a fine art medium, which isn't always hard set in reality (see: every abstract artist, ever). I think that's at least in part why digital manipulation of images evokes such a strong negative response from laypeople and amateurs. And of course, the term "photoshop" is so heavily and negatively associated with setting unrealistic expectations for women and, with increasing frequency, for men, in fashion and fitness magazines and advertisements, that it would seem that nothing good could come from additional processing.

But, editing in post is to digital photography what darkroom processing is to traditional film photography. It's a misconception that traditional photography isn't processed. Film photography actually involves a lot of processing - washing the undeveloped film in various chemicals to develop the images, stopping the reaction, neutralizing it to make the images permanent... and that's just preparing the film. When you actually create a print in the dark room, you have to expose the photo paper to light and develop that as well. That's also when selective creative processes like dodging and burning (yes, just like the Photoshop buttons) occur. Seemingly small changes in those steps can yield vastly different results to the final image.

Ultimately, to me, photography is a form of fine art to be enjoyed for its aesthetic quality - to tell a story, convey a mood, or just be a pleasing picture. I don't agree with photoshopping the hell out of portraits or models and setting unrealistic expectations for anyone, but to vilify all digital editing of photography is painting with too broad a brush (haha, see what I did there?).

In any case, a successful first day and I can't wait to head out again for more!!

Active Shooting Hours: 2 Review Hours: 2 Hours To Date: 218

The sea lions at Pier 39 are a San Franciscan institution, though they arrived to the docks only a few months before the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989. They bark constantly and playfully jostle for space on the wooden docks, pleasing tourists, marine biologists, and the occasional photog.

Some of these shots were difficult purely because I couldn't get any closer to the animals beyond using the 55-200mm zoom lens, which made composition a challenge. Some of that was resolved with post-editing and liberal use of cropping, but it makes me yearn for a telephoto lens. I don't need one, but any stretch of the imagination, but I would love to be able to zoom in to capture expression in detail when moving closer isn't an option.

Still, I managed to get several interesting images out of 40 or so tries.