It occurs to me that nowadays, the artistry of photography seems to be in the post production rather than the original photography which makes me a little sad. Believe me, I don’t begrudge anyone the right to alter their images using Photoshop or whatever pixel editor you like, but it does seem like image post production is now overpowering the original photography. There are photographers who can do wonderful things like compositing, layering multiple images, etc. in post, it’s just not my thing.
For one thing, that means more time behind a computer which is something I am trying to avoid. Photography is already more about sales, marketing and finance than actual photography unfortunately and I don’t want to add too much post production to that list. I try to limit the number of hours behind the computer by shooting it the way I want the final image to look, by limiting the number of applications used in post and by creating shortcuts that I can use over and over for specific shoot or clients.
I know photographers who shoot tethered into Capture One, process in Capture One then import into Lightroom, then export to Photoshop for retouching or compositing, maybe run through Portrait Professional and then put back into Lightroom to catalog, print and make web galleries. Then they use Dropstuff to compress images and Fetch to upload to their server for delivery.
I try to work smarter not harder.
