Digital Photography - Accepting Software Into Your Life

Digital photography has created a shift in the balance between art and technology. No matter how much you pride yourself on your camera traditional skills, you also need to know much more about software.

The forced nature photographers who grew up with film, as I have many others, the way I see my role changing. In the past, I knew that if elected the best light for a theme and applied my camera skills, I would normally produce the photo I was after the film.Furthermore, the film would produce a high quality print, without any need for enhancement. If you weren't happy with your photos, you didn't try to rescue them with a computer; they were simply thrown away.

There are still many people of my era who see photography the same way. I have been surprised recently to find that there are also many new photographers who still want to produce their perfect image 'in camera.They believe traditional skills should be sufficient for great

Deep down, a part of me welcomes this philosophy. Finally, if you are the product of your photos on your skills with a computer than with a camera, you call yourself a really good photographer?

But here's the problem.

Recently, I have a class that explains the basics of photography was well informed, aperture, shutter speed is, depth of field, lighting, etc. A member of the class on my side during abreak with a question about some of his photos. "I think there must be something wrong with my camera or my lens," he told me. "I don't think my photos are overexposed or underexposed. I don't think I used the wrong ISO, and I think my photos are in focus. In fact I think I am doing everything right. But the photos look soft, they look flat...they have no life."

I took a look at the images and I had to agree. The problem was, he wanted me to tell him what he was doing wrong with his Camera. But if they are not badly lit, blurry or badly exposed, what could I tell him?

The problem was certainly not with his DSLR camera. In a class of fifteen people and at least ten different camera models, it was the most advanced camera in the room.

We transferred one of his photos on my computer. I opened it in my editing software and is automatically detected and the contrast and saturation for any of the images. The result was an immediate and dramatic. A photo that was flat andlifeless, was suddenly rich and three-dimensional. The difference was even clearer when we have another look at the original image. Well, in comparison, it looked like a bad copy.

Here was a digital file containing all information necessary to produce a perfect image quality. The information need only be rearranged with software to make it happen.

Software is one of the essential elements of modern photography has become. Although it isunderstandable that the old-school photographers can view it with disdain, the truth is that to some extent, adaptation and enlargement are now simply part of the process.

I'm not talking about using software to produce an image completely. This is quite possible in those days. You can make a heaven out of a photo, put it behind the foreground from another photo to move objects and change the colors, all with just one click. It is always a topic of debate whether thisreal photography or not; I don't think it is, but you may disagree and you are entitled to your point of view. There can be no doubt, however, that this is quite separate from capturing your photos using traditional camera skills alone.

No, what I am talking about here is using software just to 'tweak' an image, to bring it up to a standard that is comparable to film photography. You may often find this necessary to get the most out of your camera, and it is no reflection your skills as a photographer.

For old-fashioned photographer like me, this can be hard to accept. But the sooner you swallow your pride and get to know your software a little better, the sooner that you start, the kind of photos you expect from your digital camera to produce.