Before digital editing and digital enhancement, photography itself was an art form. In its purest, most natural form.
Digital editing was almost unheard of 20+ years ago. Photographers strived to get the best angle with the best light to achieve the ultimate photograph. As technology has improved, nearly all digital cameras now come with numerous settings to help even novice photographers take a great photograph with minimal effort. What’s more, the advancements in computer software means that even if you didn’t quite get all factors correct when you take the photograph, all is not lost, just digitally enhance it to achieve the look you were striving for in the first place.
The Right Way or the Cheats Way
Is this cheating? Yes and no. Yes, because that raw first image is exactly that, nothing more than the basis of the final piece. No, because technology and software alike should be embraced. We are all striving to do the best we can, what’s a little helping hand from technology?
It’s not cheating. It’s just making the most out of what is out there to help you achieve the best results. You almost replace the need to have an eye for a good photograph. Take loads of shots, sift through them all, take the best ones. Crop them to get the best composite image and enhance away. In today’s media, very rarely (apart from photographers documenting war or natural disasters etc) to the general public ever see a raw untouched image. In our attempts to make objects, landscapes and people look their best; images have to be enhanced in our pursuit for perfection.
Embrace the Tools
I’m not saying that everyone with a digital camera and editing software are instantly professional photographer, but with everyone having a unique outlook on what they think makes a great picture, we can all develop some basic skills in photo editing to enable every picture taken has the potential to be something more than just another picture. Take Microsoft’s ‘Cloud’ editing software for example, this basic program will allow you to edit photos, something that a few years ago would be something left to the professionals. It’s good to see that society in general is very pro active in getting involved in every aspect of their general lives, photography being one of them. I’m not saying everyone’s an expert at everything, but everyone should try something and see how they get on. You may have skills you never knew you had, but how would you know unless you experiment?
We don’t doubt the skills a professional photographer has over an amateur, as web designers and developers we can appreciate a well taken and subtly enhanced image for use on a website, over a fuzzy image someone has supplied by mean of a budget range digital camera or a camera phone image!
Check out our restored photos below.
We would love to hear you opinions.
