Thoughtful Thursday: To edit or not!

For those of you just joining my "Thoughtful Thursday" posts, welcome! I encourage you to check out last week's post J. Hall Photography: Thoughtful Thursday- Know your Camera! As I mentioned in last week's post, this week is about editing! Just as developing film played a huge roll in film photography, editing plays a huge roll in today's digital photography. I have heard from other photographers that, photography just isn't what it used to be. Which to some extent I completely agree. On the other hand, I think we, as digital photographers, have so many more tools at our finger tips that past photographers different. One being of course the tools we use to edit our photographs. Developing film can be a very tedious and time consuming task. We are so lucky that all we have to do now is upload our photographs onto our computers and begin working on them. If we decide we don't like something we did, we can just "undo" it and begin again. There are also so many different editing programs offered to us. Currently I use Adobe Lightroom. I have to say, I love it! It makes my process in editing so fast. I used to use Photoshop for all of my editing. Now I only use it once in awhile to fix facial blemishes that are too much for lightroom or other random things. I think photoshop is more in depth than I need. Most of what I do to my photographs is adjust the color balance, the brightness and contrast and other things along those lines. Lightroom's focus is on just that. I can make my own presets which makes editing even faster. Also Lightroom allows me to have a quick work flow by not having to save each photograph before I work on the next. You would be surprised at how much time that cuts out. As a portrait photographer you don't just take photographs or edit, you have to look at the business side of things also. Having a quick turn around time is very important. Lightroom allows me to do that! Being able to work with just the essentials helps me stay on track and not get carried away. Your photographs should speak for themselves. You shouldn't have to rely on your editing to let your photograph tell it's story. Although, just because editing shouldn't tell your story, doesn't mean it shouldn't be apart of it. Editing can help seperate your style from others. It can help elevate your photographs. My philosophy is simple is best. Like I said before, let your photograph speak for themselves. I hate when I see other photographers work that is so retouched and manipulated that the object looks fake. I feel it is so distracting and takes away from the photograph. I end up spending so much time trying to figure out what went wrong with the editing, then what the photograph is actually focusing on. As with everything else in life, you have to find a balance. Practice on getting your photograph as close to perfect in camera, and then add the finishing adjustments with your editing. Someone should be able to look at your photograph and not be distracted by what you did to it. Here are a few examples of some photographs before and after editing.




In the first photograph, you get the same feel in the before and after. I basically just brightened the photo and upped the contrast.

 

In this second photograph I took a little more artistic liberty. I used a different color tone and brightened the photo. It's bright and vibrant just like the subjects in the photograph. Editing should match the mood of the photograph!

 

In this last photograph I had to share an example of black and white. When do you use it? Honestly, for me it's a feeling. As I'm shooting I will look down at my camera off and on and check on the photographs, that is when I mentally edit the photos I see. When I took this one I knew before I even uploaded it that I wanted it to be black and white. It matches the mood of the photograph don't you think!? 

I hope this post helps you in deciding which way you decide to go with your editing! Don't forget to let your photograph speak for yourself. Oh and remember, your editing should match the mood of the photograph! Look out for next Thoughtful Thursday, it'll be all about what to expect on a typical photo session with me!