The digital age ushered in a whole new meaning to the world of photography! Gone are the days of dark rooms and taking your roll of film to the drug store. In the 1990s digital cameras started very primitively. My first one was a Sony Mavica. You slid in a three and a half inch floppy disc and it would take about a dozen photos at one third of a megapixel!
We’ve come a long way in a short period of time and today’s DSLRs are capable of shooting thousands of photos at 12, 16, 20, 24, 36, and 50 or more megapixels! Incredible quality, ease of use, and instant gratification! The really special thing about serious photographers is the ability to enhance their photos with sophisticated editing software. Personally I enjoy this part as much as taking the photo!
Here’s an example of taking a ho hum picture and turning it into a handsome photo! This one was taken a few years ago in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We had chartered a small craft to take us out to photograph beyond the port. It was cloudy and hazy, but since we were on a cruise ship we had to make the best of it since we would be there only one day. This was straight out of my Nikon D7000 camera.
As you can see this is not much to look at. Now I’m going to import it into the ON1RAW Photo Editor and play with some adjustments. ON1RAW is new on the market and is very similar to Adobe’s Lightroom. After several enhancements it looked like this.
Not bad, but I’m not satisfied with the sky as the upper left is over exposed. Over the years I have taken a lot of sky pictures and keep them in a separate folder on my hard drive for occasions like this. So let’s replace the sky, then add a layer of orange over the water as to show the reflection from the sky, and here’s the final photo.
This is a far cry from the original and shows what can be done with some editing skill. Some purists say that this isn’t ethical, that it’s not right to change what you originally shot, and to that I say “hog wash!” That’s why today’s advanced photographers call themselves “Photo Artists.” Every photo from any pro has been edited. The only exception that I can think of would be a wartime photo journalist.
Now comes an even more exciting part of digital photography and that’s the tremendous advancements of cell phones. Today’s smartphone cameras are capable of beautiful pictures and in some ways are almost equivalent to the “big boy” cameras.
Most people are happy with their photo results as soon as they look at it and post it immediately to social media. Some of us however realize that it can look even better with a couple of minutes of editing. Maybe the best phone photo editor on planet Earth is “Snapseed.” I absolutely love this app! It’s available for both iPhones, and Androids, and it’s free with no advertising! Once you spend a little time with this app you’ll be amazed how you can make your pictures “come to life!”