I’m a Photographer . . .

Or am I a Photoshop Master (even though my Photoshop skills are so basic that I wouldn’t dare say I’m a master, but just go with it)? Which is it because I’m just not sure anymore what digital photography really is.

When I was 10 I took a picture on a field trip of cows grazing in a field with a dinky disposable film camera, and when I got my pictures back I said, “I want to be a photographer”. I knew it then, and I know it now. When I was 15 I got my first camera, my baby, a Chinon CM-5 35mm film camera. It was fully manual, and ancient, made in 1980 or something. I seriously had to advance the film manually. It didn’t have a built-in metering system or anything so I used a hand meter (which I just lost last year and have yet to replace).  The camera was a gift from my uncle who wasn’t a photographer and never really used it. Boy, do I have memories with that camera – a lot of them bad, particularly when I first started (I would take a picture of it but I lent it to my cousin to learn the technical side of photography. Erin, when are you sending it back to me? :) ). For the longest time I would take pictures and I’d look at the knobs on the camera for the shutter speed and ISO setting and wonder what the heck those things were. No wonder I couldn’t get a decently exposed picture for my life. I finally got up enough courage to ask my photography friend Spencer Burton ( by the way, he’s amazing - an actual, REAL photographer) what the knobs meant, how to use my light meter, and a whole new world of properly exposed pictures opened up to me. It was love.

I continued learning with my Chinon for the next several years. I shot my first weddings on that baby. And the pictures were good. Good for a 17 year old-girl, anyway,  who’d read every book she could get her hands on and photographed every kid that she came in contact with. Then the digital camera seemed to ever so cunningly creep its way into the photographic world, and I was thoroughly annoyed. I remember thinking, “Great, here begin the days where you pick up a digital camera, open up your unsightly image in Photoshop, and make a National Geographic cover shot out of it. There they go, the technical skills behind photography.” So I vowed and promised and assured all around me that I would never, not ever, no never join the digital movement. In fact, when I got married in 2004 and Spencer shot my wedding, I told him to leave his digital camera at home and bring the REAL stuff (he shot mainly medium format then anyway). I bragged up and down that I had a real photographer who shot with real film and had real talent and decided that’s what I was going to do as well.  I even bought my ancient medium format Bronica ETRS in 2004 when all the world was pretty much switching to digital. Maybe it had already made the switch before that but I had only become aware of the digital movement in 2003.

I stuck with that film of mine. I was faithful and devoted (My mother had taught me loyalty). Until one dark day in the winter of 2006 when my blessed Canon EOS 5D arrived gloriously at my door. Oh, the things it could do.  And I was from then on a cheater, faithful to nothing but falling for all the fancy things my sweet 5D could do. I set aside that old Chinon, apologized for my betrayal, but reminded myself that all the cool people were doing it, and I would be eating their photographic dust if I didn’t too. No-one is going to hire a film photographer to shoot their wedding, I assured myself. After saying all that I didn’t feel bad for walking out on film,  leaving it high and dry, and calling it outdated.

Have I missed film these past 4 years? You betchya. I missed shooting and my job being done after I put my camera down. After making the switch to digital, I quickly realized that it wasn’t technical skills or an eye for amazing composition that set one photographer apart from another. It was one’s skill in digital manipulation that seemed to set his images above the rest. Creamy, flawless images with smooth skin and highly saturated colors, sharpened to the max, skies with vibrant colors that had never existed in life before. Soon after I went digital it seemed that I didn’t learn anything about “photography” but that I began to wonder how photographers got their images to look so perfect and flawless, so not real. And I know now that all of the work is in editing. When I say, “I want to be a better photographer” I mean, “I want to learn more Photoshop tricks.”

I’m not saying that digital photographers don’t have skills or terrific abilities. But the undeniable truth is that digital and film photography are two ENTIRELY different art forms, and I was blatantly unaware of that for the longest time. I’m not totally hating on digital, just calling it how I see it. The digital camera  and all the editing software available today make it easy for any person, any ol’ Joe, to pick up a digital camera and 3 months later decide to open up their own “professional” photography business. It’s just what I was afraid of when 7 years ago I saw the transition from film to digital unfold before my eyes. “There they go, the technical skills behind photography.”  That’s what I said, and I’ve seen it in so many photographers around me.

What is my point, you ask? Is she going back to film? What is she getting at? I don’t even know what my point is. I just thought I’d share my frustrations about digital photography with someone besides myself.  This is not what I wanted when I was 15 and knew that I was going to be a photographer. I didn’t want to tell someone that I’m a photographer and them to respond by saying, “Oh so is my cousin, my sister, and aunt, and maybe even her dog” as if it’s just the trendy thing to do these days. I didn’t want to be just another photographer, another ol’ Joe, but that’s what I am. I edit my pictures too.

But what can I do?  Move back to the lost ancient art of film while all the world is moving forward? I wouldn’t doubt it if one day pictures edit themselves and machines are taking our pictures, and the human being, the talented photographer behind the camera, is flippin burgers while muttering under her breath, “I used to be an artist.”

Now after all that was said, I’m going to show you what I do to each and every image that I edit.

Here’s my SOTC shot (straight out of the camera)

Here’s my shot after I opened it in camera raw. I warmed it up from 4900 to 6300, brought the tint from –7 to –12, decreased the exposure from 0 to –30, increased the brightness from 50 to 60 and set the contrast at 30.  Took about 20 seconds.

Then I did what I do on every single picture I ever take. I opened it in CS2 and ran my personal action that I created  and call Pop and Smooth.  Pop and Smooth is 3 steps: Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen, and Reduce Noise. That’s it. Wam bam, here’s your picture, ma’am.

I don’t do any skin retouching unless someone’s got a major pimple that I can’t ignore. Once in a while if I’ve got someone that’s really pink I’ll take down the reds in Selective Color. I’m as minimalistic as I can be when it comes to editing, and I typically batch process all of my images. It’s very efficient, and since I’m a stay-at-home mama I can’t spend hours a day editing. in fact, I only edit on Tuesday and Wednesdays when my boys are at their dad’s so that they get their mama’s attention.

Also here’s a secret. I barely know anything about Photoshop. I hear people talk about dodging and burning and layer masks, and I am lost. I haven’t the slightest clue about how to use those things or what people even use them for. I always feel like a doofus when photographers talk about Photoshop stuff since my skills in Photoshop are so basic. But I guess that’s okay too. We don’t all have to be the same cookie-cutter digital photographer.