NickTrop
Veteran
Quick!
Name two famous photographers everyone -- even your granny, knows! The Beatles and The Stones of photography! That would be:
1. Ansel Adams
2. Henri Cartier-Bresson
(Who said Salgado? No, no, no. He's more like Radiohead.)
What's the difference between them? Welp, there are many. But a big one is Adams would laboriously pick his location, then labourously set up his shots, patiently wait for just the right time of day when the lighting was just so, then labourously process the negative, then exhaustively laboriously work that print dodging and burning and timing and scrapping and starting over -- days, weeks, months until his print was PERFECT in his mind.
HBC
Ran around France clicking away trying to capture the "decisive moment". Went through rolls and rolls and rolls of 35mm film every day. Did he laborously work each and every frame he shot like ole Ansel? LOLz. Of course not! What's the matter with you? Are you some kinda bloke? He outsourced those bits, silly. Boring grunt work. No time for that! He had decisive moments to capture!
HBC could not have worked prints like Adams. He couldn't have. Those "infinite monkeys" would complete the works of Shakespeare before HBC would finish making all those prints. Similarly, could Adams have worked like HBC? Well, sure he could have. And you would have never heard of Ansel Adams. AA (not Arn Anderson -- he's a retired pro 'rassler) would have starved to death at a young age trying to sell his crappy prints.
So. What we have today are lots of folks running around snapping away with their digital cameras coming home with 1,000 pictures of their niece's 7th birthday party on a high capacity flash mem card...
Of course, these photos are all shot RAW. Perish the thought of actually using that sophisticated jpeg engine in their camera... What are you, an amateur? (Well, yeah... I guess I am. Though I did make $18.84 on Shutterstock last year...)
... then, once home, going into Lightroom and meticulously working each photo and every RAW file ala "Ansel Adams" inspecting each of those 36 million pixels at 1000% magnification (Look at how sharp those blurred out corners are! That $1000 "Art" lens was worth every stinkin' penny!) until that beautiful "descisive moment" candid you took of Aunt Maisey as she was eating a cream puff during dessert is just perfecto! It took six hours on Sunday sliding sliders back and forth and forth and back in Lightroom agonizing over every precious pixel -- but finally, FINALLY, you NAILED it! You truly captured Aunt Maisey's "essence"! Aunt Maisey will love it when I show it to her next week at poor ole Uncle Zeke's (RIP) post-funeral luncheon! Might help cheer her up, now that she'll be alone. 🙁
One photo down! 946 t' go! I'll get back round to doin' the rest of those. (Someday. Sure ya' will...)
And s' here's the problem. You (YES YOU!) are shooting like HBC. But you're processing like AA. Eh? And you can't. You just CAN NOT do it that way! Take it from me! I know! Either shoot HBC style, and process HBC style, which is straight out of the camera jpeg, outsourcing to that jpeg engine in your camera. (Computers. They really are job killers. Aren't they?) Learn to love it.
OR?
Shoot AA style, in RAW, a managable number of "frames" and obsess over every pixel of that RAW "digital negative" (eye roll) in "Lightroom" (ditto) to perfection.
But never the 'twain shall meet. Don't go shooting HBC style and try to process AA style. Please? Promise? And don't go to some beautiful location put your camera on a tripod and everything. And then go and shoot a SOTC jpeg. Okay? There oughtta be a law. Really.
To summarize
So -- for the love of god and country man, shoot HBC-style (SOTC jpeg) of your niece's 7th birthday party, willya? There's a time and a place for obsessing over RAW files. Like you're on holiday where there's a beee-youuu-t'-phil sunset. Or you're in Scotland and there's a lovely old castle (and it's haunted ya know. At least that's what the tour guide said...) that would make for a picturesque picture. (Me, I wouldn't waste time on the haunted castle but would be at the Laphroaig distillery for a tasting -- until they flicked the lights and said Yankee go home...) And that's the occasion for AA RAW style shooting and post processing.
Oh -- one last thing. If you're bothering to shoot and process AA style? Make a nice sized print of it please? Spring for a decent frame? Hang it somewhere in your flat? Okay? Do it for me.
You're welcome.
Name two famous photographers everyone -- even your granny, knows! The Beatles and The Stones of photography! That would be:
1. Ansel Adams
2. Henri Cartier-Bresson
(Who said Salgado? No, no, no. He's more like Radiohead.)
What's the difference between them? Welp, there are many. But a big one is Adams would laboriously pick his location, then labourously set up his shots, patiently wait for just the right time of day when the lighting was just so, then labourously process the negative, then exhaustively laboriously work that print dodging and burning and timing and scrapping and starting over -- days, weeks, months until his print was PERFECT in his mind.
HBC
Ran around France clicking away trying to capture the "decisive moment". Went through rolls and rolls and rolls of 35mm film every day. Did he laborously work each and every frame he shot like ole Ansel? LOLz. Of course not! What's the matter with you? Are you some kinda bloke? He outsourced those bits, silly. Boring grunt work. No time for that! He had decisive moments to capture!
HBC could not have worked prints like Adams. He couldn't have. Those "infinite monkeys" would complete the works of Shakespeare before HBC would finish making all those prints. Similarly, could Adams have worked like HBC? Well, sure he could have. And you would have never heard of Ansel Adams. AA (not Arn Anderson -- he's a retired pro 'rassler) would have starved to death at a young age trying to sell his crappy prints.
So. What we have today are lots of folks running around snapping away with their digital cameras coming home with 1,000 pictures of their niece's 7th birthday party on a high capacity flash mem card...
Of course, these photos are all shot RAW. Perish the thought of actually using that sophisticated jpeg engine in their camera... What are you, an amateur? (Well, yeah... I guess I am. Though I did make $18.84 on Shutterstock last year...)
... then, once home, going into Lightroom and meticulously working each photo and every RAW file ala "Ansel Adams" inspecting each of those 36 million pixels at 1000% magnification (Look at how sharp those blurred out corners are! That $1000 "Art" lens was worth every stinkin' penny!) until that beautiful "descisive moment" candid you took of Aunt Maisey as she was eating a cream puff during dessert is just perfecto! It took six hours on Sunday sliding sliders back and forth and forth and back in Lightroom agonizing over every precious pixel -- but finally, FINALLY, you NAILED it! You truly captured Aunt Maisey's "essence"! Aunt Maisey will love it when I show it to her next week at poor ole Uncle Zeke's (RIP) post-funeral luncheon! Might help cheer her up, now that she'll be alone. 🙁
One photo down! 946 t' go! I'll get back round to doin' the rest of those. (Someday. Sure ya' will...)
And s' here's the problem. You (YES YOU!) are shooting like HBC. But you're processing like AA. Eh? And you can't. You just CAN NOT do it that way! Take it from me! I know! Either shoot HBC style, and process HBC style, which is straight out of the camera jpeg, outsourcing to that jpeg engine in your camera. (Computers. They really are job killers. Aren't they?) Learn to love it.
OR?
Shoot AA style, in RAW, a managable number of "frames" and obsess over every pixel of that RAW "digital negative" (eye roll) in "Lightroom" (ditto) to perfection.
But never the 'twain shall meet. Don't go shooting HBC style and try to process AA style. Please? Promise? And don't go to some beautiful location put your camera on a tripod and everything. And then go and shoot a SOTC jpeg. Okay? There oughtta be a law. Really.
To summarize
So -- for the love of god and country man, shoot HBC-style (SOTC jpeg) of your niece's 7th birthday party, willya? There's a time and a place for obsessing over RAW files. Like you're on holiday where there's a beee-youuu-t'-phil sunset. Or you're in Scotland and there's a lovely old castle (and it's haunted ya know. At least that's what the tour guide said...) that would make for a picturesque picture. (Me, I wouldn't waste time on the haunted castle but would be at the Laphroaig distillery for a tasting -- until they flicked the lights and said Yankee go home...) And that's the occasion for AA RAW style shooting and post processing.
Oh -- one last thing. If you're bothering to shoot and process AA style? Make a nice sized print of it please? Spring for a decent frame? Hang it somewhere in your flat? Okay? Do it for me.
You're welcome.
