October 27th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
There are so many great lenses on the market today. Most people’s budgets are finite, so we can’t buy every lens that looks interesting. Even if we could, we would run into a problem with storage and transport. Yet the ads and the photo magazine lens write ups make lenses look so inviting. Then a friend or acquaintance shows off a new lens that makes us want it. Lens choice is not a simple option. There are lots of reasons for buying a lens.
However, focal length considerations are important and not only affect what you can capture with your camera, but they also affect the way you photograph. You know the saying that goes something like, if you have a hammer, the whole world looks like it is filled with nails. If you have a wide-angle lens, you may find the whole world is filled with wide-angle landscapes.
On the other hand, you may have a number of lenses and discover that you are naturally drawn to certain focal lengths. I don’t think that is a bad thing at all. In fact, recognizing how you see the world through photography, your vision, your style can be a very good thing.
Some photographers love to have all sorts of focal lengths, some prefer to limit their choices to a few focal lengths. Jay Maisel used to answer the question of what focal lengths he had with, “All of them.” On the other hand, another pro, Burk Uzzle used to shoot everything, including major assignments with two lenses, a 35mm wide-angle and a 105mm telephoto (or something close to those). Both photographers are superb pros (I am not sure if Uzzle is still alive) and did wonderful work.
So it truly comes down to how you photograph, your subjects and what is important to you. That is really a key to choosing the right focal length, either buying a new lens or keeping your packing of a camera bag simpler. There is little sense in packing a lens that you will never use. But what do you need? And how do you know what you need?
I like to tell photographers to look at how they shoot and to think about when they feel limited. If they feel they constantly want to get more of a scene in their images, then a wide-angle is important. If they feel they constantly need to get “closer” to a distant subject, then a telephoto is important. If they constantly use one end of a zoom, whether that is wide or tele, that can give an indication that maybe the zoom range is not appropriate and they should look into a different zoom that has a range featuring the focal lengths they do use. If they feel that they need close up images they can’t capture, then they need close up gear.
If you want to travel light, a small, lightweight wide-angle zoom plus a small, lightweight telephoto zoom can be perfect. Shorter zoom ranges are easier to manufacture than big range zooms, often have higher image quality and are usually smaller, even if the latter means just one lens. That can mean less weight and better balance for the camera around your neck. In addition, big range zooms tend to be very slow (small maximum f-stops) at the telephoto end of the zoom.
If you want to do wildlife photography, you need a long telephoto, at least 300mm and often more. If you want to do available light photography indoors, you need a fast lens (a lens with a wide max aperture. If you want to do people photography, a moderate telephoto works well. If you like doing landscapes, a wide-angle zoom or wide to moderate telephoto can be important.
Bottom line for choosing focal length is that it all depends on your needs. I know at this point, that probably seems self-evident, but from looking at a lot of student’s backpacks and how they are shooting, I often see that they carry more gear than they really use. Sometimes they really have the wrong lens for the way they like to shoot. I strongly believe that you must like your gear, including your lens choices, if you are really going to enjoy photographing with it.
Posted in Equipment thoughts | 2 Comments »
October 23rd, 2009 Rob Sheppard
Everyone says that it is so easy to change white balance in RAW, that you can simply set your camera to AWB when you shoot RAW and set white balance in Lightroom or other program. Yet, though this may be true in concept, I consistently see problems with white balance due to that technique because of the problems with auto white balance or AWB.
First off, AWB is inconsistent. You can take a picture of the same scene with wide angle and telephoto focal lengths and get two different white balances. The colors will be different, even though they should be identical. Now you are faced with a workflow problem — you have to adjust white balance of at least one of the photos, yet if you set your camera to a specific white balance, often you would not do any adjusting at all.
Now if you have to adjust white balance, then you are faced with a decision. Suppose you have those two images that came up with different color because of AWB — which one is correct or alternately which one is better? Or maybe neither! So regardless of what program you are working with, you have a workflow issue where you have to go in and change white balance settings.
And that gives another problem. A lot of people see the settings for white balance in Lightroom and Camera Raw, notice that they are similar to the camera’s settings, and figure that they can just set these settings there. Actually, you can’t. Those settings are Adobe colors, Adobe interpretations of digital image files, not interpretations of a real-world scene as your camera is doing. This means that if you have two radically different images that are both in standard daylight conditions and set both to Adobe’s daylight setting, for example, you can get different looks for both photos. That’s definitely a problem.
And there are other problems, including one that I had not thought about until I started seeing so many photographs from my students at BetterPhoto.com that I was recognizing as having been shot with AWB. When digital cameras first came out, I was an advocate for setting a specific white balance, especially when shooting outdoors. This, to me, was simply a part of the craft of photography now modified by digital. I have always felt that it is best to capture the best image from the start rather than trying to “fix” it later, which is what using AWB plus a RAW software to set white balance does. But I did not believe that I could actually recognize AWB until I started seeing consistent color problems such as weaker colors and colors that are contaminated by blue.
What I think seems to happen is that the photographer gets back in front of the computer after shooting something outside and sees the image in isolation. AWB may often give a compromised color, but it usually looks “okay” on the monitor, and most photographers don’t shoot a series of varied shots of the same subject, so they don’t see the variation in color that AWB gives. So they don’t make the white balance adjustment needed, the white balance adjustment that some RAW aficionados say makes AWB fine to use. AWB would be okay to use if the photographer always made an adjustment, but so often, like I said, the AWB photo looks okay and so the photographer accepts the weaker color and contaminated blues because there is nothing to compare to.
So for me, it is a workflow and photographic craft issue. I set my white balance to a specific setting because I want consistent results when shooting in the field, because I want to be sure I have captured the best colors while I am still in the field, and because I don’t want to have to “fix it” in Lightroom (which is my program of choice).
Do I use AWB? Yes. I think it is an important control when you are indoors with screwy lighting. It can be hard in those conditions to figure out what to do for white balance. I also think that custom white balance is a good thing to use in those conditions, including devices such as the Spyder Cube that are a great help when working with a RAW file in Lightroom or other program in order to get neutral colored neutral colors. Custom white balance is trickier to use outdoors in nature because there are often important natural color casts to such scenes that you want to retain or even emphasize.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Lightroom | 2 Comments »
October 22nd, 2009 Rob Sheppard
Adobe just announced its next version of Lightroom as Lightroom 3 beta. That is exactly what it says, a beta, meaning it is unfinished. This is not a program to use for your main work as it has bugs in it and things that don’t work quite right yet. While Adobe tends to be very secretive about their plans for a final version of anything, I would expect the final version of Lightroom 3 to be available maybe by early spring next year.
Before I talk about some of the new features that you might find of interest, I should just talk a little about Lightroom and RAW converters. To be honest, I am not that interested in other programs. I find that Lightroom is the best image handling and processing program available today for most photographers. I don’t base that simply on my work with Lightroom (although I can tell you very honestly that I could not produce the books and workshops I do now at the pace I do them without Lightroom). I also base this on working with many, many photographers in classes, workshops and even one-on-one consulting that Lightroom works very well indeed for photographers. Compared to Photoshop, it is interesting that when I do a Photoshop workshop, it can take a week before students really start to feel comfortable, yet with Lightroom, they are actively and confidently working on their own within 2-3 days.
I cannot recommend Aperture, for example, because it is missing some key photographic controls — you cannot check black levels with a threshold screen (which I consider vital to good image processing) and you cannot do dodging and burning non-destructively (you must use an export plug-in). Lightroom does dodging and burning non-destructively within the program and truly brings me back to traditional darkroom work. Nikon’s Capture NX is a superb program, for another example, but it is only available for Nikon RAW files (though it can handle anyone’s JPEG files), so that makes it limited in use for only a select group of photographers.
Lightroom 3 has had its processing engine taken apart and rebuilt, from what I hear from Adobe. This is a big deal with RAW files as images from such files must be “built” from RAW data such as keeping the color pattern of pixels from the sensor as is (the color pattern from nearly all sensors is not the way the world looks and has to be “developed” in order to get a correct image). So having a better processing engine will mean better final results in many aspects, including a cleaner file from any camera. Some people are finding that the program is now giving substantially improved results from smaller sensor, many megapixeled cameras that starts to rival larger sensor cameras.
One thing that is different is a new noise reduction set of algorithms (and this comes from the new processing engine). I was never much impressed with the noise reduction of any Adobe products. This now promises excellent noise reduction within the Lightroom workflow, which is a welcome feature. Color noise works in the beta, but luminance is not functional yet. I am still optimistic, given Adobe’s talents, that the final results will be quite good.
One thing I quite like about LR 3 is the new Import feature. Import was not bad before, but it is such an important function, and the old version didn’t give it the feeling of importance that it deserved. Consequently, many photographers breezed by many key import decisions. I think the new interface for Import is well thought out and uses a similar format to the modules of Lightroom, which elevates it to “module level” of importance. I think that is a good thing, plus the new Import interface makes it easier to make the right decisions for importing photos.
Another thing I really like about LR3 that has absolutely nothing to do with better photos is the change from Grayscale to Black-and-White. It’s about time. Grayscale was never a very photographic term. No one who worked with black-and-white photography ever said they were going to do some grayscale printing today! Grayscale is a computer term and an affectation for photographers who have no sense of history. Black-and-white continues the very strong emphasis that Lightroom has on being highly photography centric.
I have really liked the vignetting feature of LR2 that allows quick and easy darkening of the edges of a photo. Ansel Adams made a big deal about edge darkening in his books (and I still consider his book, The Print, a must for digital photographers — just skip all the chemistry stuff). In LR3, the post-crop vignette gains some new algorithms which have been described as giving a “more natural look.” Although I am not sure what a more natural look really means for such an effect, the new vignettes do look quite pleasing and you get some new options on how color and tone are affected.
A very noticeable new feature of LR 3 is the Publish Services in the Library. To be honest, I have not used this part of the beta. It is designed to make publishing photos to websites (such as Flickr) and other “off-site” locations easier.
Slideshows now get music that can be fit to the slides, plus you can save your slide show in a video form that keeps music with it. That is a big improvement, but still, the slideshow capabilities of Lightroom are pretty limited. If you are serious about slide shows, check out ProShow Gold from Photodex Software for Windows or FotoMagico from Boinx Software for the Mac. Even a simple video program such as Adobe Premiere Elements will give more flexibility with slide shows.
There is more, but the highlights above are what stand out for me. Check out Victoria Bampton’s blog, Lightroom Queen, to get more info on LR3.
Posted in Books, Lightroom | 2 Comments »
October 19th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
I am finding there still is some confusion as to camera speeds and memory card speeds, so first, lets look at camera speeds. All cameras that shoot RAW and JPEG will shoot both formats in all drive speeds, but because of the file size differences, whether you shoot RAW, JPEG or both at the same time will affect how the camera handles multiple shots. As the camera shoots at high or low drive speeds, the camera will often shoot faster than the files can be put onto the memory card. The files are then put into a buffer (memory in the camera just for this purpose) to wait in line to get on the memory card. When that buffer is filled, the camera will stop shooting until room is made for the shots. With RAW, the buffer fills quickly because the image files are large, which means that after a certain number of shots, the buffer will be filled and there is no more room for additional image files, so the camera will quit shooting. With JPEG, the buffer fills more slowly because the files are much smaller, and often the memory card can keep up with the JPEG files so the camera does not quit shooting. This is a big reason for the L or low speed setting on many cameras — since shots are taken slower, the buffer fills more slowly, even with RAW, so you can keep shooting longer than with H or high speed.
Memory card speed affects how fast the camera can pull images out of the buffer and load them onto the card. A faster card will allow the buffer to be emptied faster as long as, and this is an important qualification, the camera has been designed to handle the speed of the card. If a card is faster than the capabilities of the camera, that speed is wasted as the camera cannot go that fast. Using a high-speed memory card with a camera that cannot work that fast will have no effect on camera speed and will give no better results than a lower speed memory card. Most mid-level to high-end cameras typically could handle the speeds of cards available at the time the camera first came to market, but then this capability will change over time as card speeds increase during the life of the camera model. Memory card speed has no effect on how fast the camera can shoot — that is purely a function of the mechanics and electronics of the camera. It can only affect how fast the buffer is cleared, which will affect how long the camera can shoot before it has to stop and allow the buffer to open up.
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October 16th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
As we all become more sophisticated and experienced in working with digital, we learn new things or learn things about specific recommendations that revise our thoughts about them. I have been doing a lot of work lately with brighter objects in a scene and this has made me challenge some ideas you often see about digital exposure. This was especially brought home to me during a workshop I was doing last week in the Eastern Sierras.
You may have heard of the expression, “Expose to the right.” This means that you expose to push the histogram to the right. A number of RAW digital gurus recommend this as a standard way of shooting, even to the extent of going past exposure warnings by the camera and overexposing bright areas slightly. The reason for this is that Camera RAW and Lightroom especially will recover detail in such bright areas. By exposing to the right, you do minimize noise in the image. Also, you will hear that what you are seeing in the LCD is a JPEG image and not the actual RAW file (which is true as the RAW file cannot be directly displayed). The implication is that the LCD display is therefore faulty.
After a lot of field work and comparing images, I can’t agree with that advice. I think one should expose as well as possible, neither overexposing nor underexposing bright areas. There is a big problem that occurs in nature photography with even slight overexposure of bright areas — loss of color. It is true that you can recover tonal detail from very bright areas, and that Camera RAW and Lightroom do a very good job of that. However, digital cameras do something unlike our eyes. As exposure is increased, the sensor’s response to color decreases. The chroma or “color-ness” of a color quickly disappears. Test this for yourself by shooting RAW at varied exposures. You will find that color in bright objects starts to disappear before the detail of the object is gone and that color cannot be recovered.
The same thing happens at the low end of the tonal scale. As colored objects are underexposed, the chroma of the colors will also disappear before the detail of the object is gone, and it also cannot be recovered.
This is why you need to get the best exposure possible for the scene. I use the highlight warnings and histogram for exposure in a way that is related to Ansel Adams’ Zone System. I have not really discussed this before because a lot of people don’t know that system. I don’t suggest running out and trying to learn it as that can take some time. Basically, what his System does is look at brightness values in the real world and try to relate them to brightness values that can be recorded on film based on exposure.
I adjust exposure until the highlight warnings just appear, then make a judgement as to whether that is wrong or right for the subject. What is happening is this — I am metering the scene to “place” the brightest areas on the brightest zone, a zone of tonality without detail. If I think that area needs some detail, I back off the exposure to give a half-stop less exposure (if you are shooting RAW, shooting with 1/3 increments, the default of many cameras, is a waste of time and shots). If that area is really unimportant in terms of detail, I can either leave the exposure alone or even give it a slight boost. For tricky scenes, I will check my histogram.
By placing this brightest part of the scene at a bright recorded value, I am also ensuring my dark areas will get optimum exposure as well given the dynamic range of the sensor and camera. If I am not getting good exposure then in the dark areas, I realize that I am going to have to either overexpose bright area and lose color and detail there or use an HDR technique.
So what about the display of JPEG in the LCD? I don’t find that matters. If I follow the procedure just described, I get good detail in my bright areas and that includes good color there. I think this is because of the extra detail in bright areas that comes from the RAW file compared to the JPEG image. If I push the shot so the bright areas really start to have warnings, I may find that I can pull detail out of those areas with RAW processing, but I will not get the best color. It is important to note that I am paying attention to the point at which the warnings appear. Do not assume you have a good exposure if no warnings appear; a badly underexposed photo can occur then.
In shooting with a lot of digital cameras beyond the ones that I own and in seeing work of a lot of students, I note that digital cameras do their best work at capturing color when the color is neither too bright nor too dark, in other words, in the middle of the range. This points out something important to consider when colors of bright areas are really critical — you might expose them at a point where the exposure warning just disappears. That will ensure that the bright areas drop down into better color capture range of the sensor. However, do not underexpose them or your dark areas will suffer (unless you want a dramatic photo with very dark, dark areas, which can be an interesting interpretation of some scenes).
You will run into situations where conditions are very challenging. First is a high contrast scene where exposing the bright areas properly means the dark areas are way underexposed. There is nothing you can do about that with a single exposure. You either have to find a different composition or use HDR. Second is a soft, low contrast scene, such as that seen after sunset. This will give you a histogram that is a small hill that does not fill the whole graph. Be very careful that you do not underexpose such a scene. That will cause processing problems, including noise and increased contrast. Expose so that the histogram spans the middle of the graph area or even slightly to the right.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Lightroom, landscape photography, nature photography | 1 Comment »
October 13th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
A lot could be written on RAW and JPEG (and I have done a bit myself in several books). I get enough questions about them that I thought it would be helpful to write down some thoughts. My ideas about photographers using RAW have changed, not because the files have changed, but because computers, software and memory cards have changed. Early in the digital change, memory cards were expensive and computers struggled with RAM. That meant the bigger RAW files could be a liability and a pain to work with. In addition, the RAW conversion programs were not always very intuitive and added steps to workflow. I have always been more interested in encouraging photographers than discouraging them. RAW files discouraged people. This has changed today and RAW can be as easy to work with as JPEG.
First, it is important to consider what RAW and JPEG are. A RAW file is an image file that takes a maximum amount of data from the image sensor (it is not, as some people think, an unprocessed file as it is processed for color and noise as it comes from the sensor and converted to digital bits in the A/D or analog digital converter). A JPEG file is an image that is processed from the RAW file while still inside your camera. You can consider it an automated RAW conversion. It is also a smartly compressed file that keeps the file size smaller. However, and this is very important, the size of a RAW and JPEG image from a given camera are identical — the file sizes are different because of the amount of compression of the file, but the image sizes are the same.
Another misconception is that RAW files are somehow inherently of higher quality than a JPEG file. That is not true. If you opened a RAW file directly without processing and compared it to a JPEG file at high quality (i.e., high quality set on the camera), you would probably prefer the JPEG file (most people do), and you will not see any sharpness or other quality problems with JPEG compared to RAW. However, that “without processing” qualification is very important. Because the RAW file holds more original data from the sensor, it has much more flexibility in processing. There is a lot more you can do with it whether you are using Camera Raw, Lightroom or another program. It is sort of like boxes of Crayola crayons. JPEG is like a 12-color box, while RAW is like a 48-color box (actually the difference is much higher). Can you color a great image with 12 crayon colors? Of course. Can you gain more flexibility in your coloring with 48 colors? Absolutely. Can you also screw up the photo with those extra colors? Also true.
So a RAW file gives you flexibility and control. This is especially true in the dark and light parts of your photo. You can always get more detail there from a RAW file than a JPEG file. When would you use them? If you need images quickly, including direct printing from your camera or memory card, such as putting a memory card in a printer or getting prints from that card at a store such as Target, then only JPEG will do.
If you need to shoot a lot of images onto a memory card and you are worried about space, JPEG will be better. If you shoot sports or other action, you may find that shooting JPEG means you can shoot continuously without stopping, while shooting with RAW will cause your camera to stop shooting when the camera buffer is filled with image data waiting in line to be transferred to the memory card. If you want to keep things simple, JPEG is easy because you can set up the camera to give certain looks to the photo without going into the computer.
If you want the best control over your image, then you need RAW. If you frequently photograph subjects with challenging dynamic ranges, such as landscapes with bright clouds, RAW will work better. If you consistently shoot images with problem bright areas or dark areas, RAW will work better. If you really pay attention to how your image is processed and you want the richest tonalities and colors, RAW is better.
Shooting RAW used to be a pain because of the added workflow steps it required. However, today, that is no longer true with Lightroom. Lightroom allows you to process any image file equally. It does not force you to a different program to deal with RAW. It was designed specifically for photographers, compared to Photoshop which was not. The result is that photographers can deal with their photos faster, easier and more efficiently in Lightroom. RAW or JPEG work the same in Lightroom. Many photographers shoot RAW + JPEG (including me). This gives them a JPEG file that can be quickly and easily used anywhere and any time, especially for making quick prints. This also gives them a RAW file that can be finessed into the optimum interpretation of the image file as needed.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Lightroom | 1 Comment »
October 12th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
As many of you know, I consider the LCD an extremely important part of digital photography. It is like an instant Polaroid that can give you a lot of information about your photography. I didn’t realize how important I have found a larger LCD to be until a recent workshop I was doing where a participant had an older digital SLR that had a small LCD. At first, and this is really true, I started to wonder where the enlarge button was to make the image look bigger!
That said, I really feel it is important to keep that screen clean and scratch free. That will help you better see what is in it. I just recently purchased an Olympus E-620 to have as a small backup for when I am traveling. I really like the camera, and in some ways, better than my E-3 because it has a larger LCD, and I think, a better layout of controls on the back of the camera. I also started using it as a small camera to just carry around with me (maybe I don’t need a Canon G-11 after all!). But that made me worry about what might happen to the LCD. I knew I needed to add some protection to it. I went down to my friendly neighborhood camera store, Paul’s Photo in Torrance, California, to get a protector. My friend, Mark Comon, who is one of the best, most helpful camera sales people I have ever met, sold me some Hoodman protectors.
I got home and opened them up, then put one on the LCD. They were okay, but not what I had hoped for. Why? Because I had put a protector on the screen of my E-3 and it was phenomenal. It has been on for years and the screen still looks great. Trouble was, I knew the protector brand started with Z, but could not remember its name. A friend had recommended it years ago. Luckily, Google came to the rescue. I typed in LCD protection, and after looking through the returned websites, found Zagg Invisible Shield. I recognized it immediately.
Zagg makes shields for all sorts of LCDs called Invisible Shield by Zagg. They also call it “extreme scratch proof transparent film”, and I can tell you from experience taking my E-3 all over in all sorts of conditions, that that is very true. I ordered one for my E-620, though the 620 is new enough that Zagg did not have one for it. They did have one for the E-520 which has the same size screen, so I ordered that. The Hoodman screens are relatively cheap compared to the Zagg screens – one Zagg screen actually costs more than a package of Hoodman screens. But I really think it is worth the cost. It is absolutely clear without imperfections and is extremely durable. I think my LCD is worth the cost.
Posted in Equipment thoughts | 1 Comment »
October 6th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
I am starting to set up workshops and other programs for 2010 and I will post them on my website when they are more or less complete. However, I wanted to mention an interesting conference near Atlanta in January.
The Georgia Nature Photographers Association is a newer group of very enthusiastic nature photographers. Their annual conference will be at the Callaway Gardens January 29-31, 2010. I will be one of the speakers there, along with Nancy Rotenberg (who has a wonderful approach to nature photography). For more information, go to www.gnpa.org.
Posted in Workshops and Classes | Comments Off
October 5th, 2009 Rob Sheppard
Nature words are now becoming endangered! An article in National Wildlife magazine reminded me of something I heard on NPR. Nature is disappearing from the Oxford Junior Dictionary! Yes, it is true. In the most recent version, more than 30 nature words are no longer defined, including otter, dandelion, fern, moss, acorn and beaver. New words have been included, including MP3 player, blog, and cut and paste. “Making room for a new lexicon of technology and communications may be a good thing for children,” says Kevin Coyle, NWF vice president for education and training, “provided they are not also denied definitions as basic as that growing on their own lawn.”
Now that makes sense to me. But I think it brings up a larger issue. Nature is, at times, being taken for granted. Oh, sure, everyone knows about global warming and such, but what about the threats to our human nature. Although at times mankind has tried to deny being part of nature, largely, people miss nature when it is not around. Simple things like trees in city streets, office windows looking over gardens or natural areas, birds flying across the skies where we live, all of these things are part of our lives. Even dandelions.
So what does that have to do with photography? A lot, I think. Nature photographers often spend a lot of time and money traveling to spectacular locations and photograph them. Nothing wrong with that. Those locations are an important part of our world.
The problem comes when “everyone else”, all of the public that sees our photography, whether as simple as a framed image in your office or in a book or calendar, all of these people then have a very limited “vocabulary” of nature. It is like the words are gone from their references to nature. If all people see of nature photographs are images from distant locations, then nature is implied and even defined mentally as being at distant locations, too.
We can do more. At my clinic’s pharmacy, a pharmacist displays his photos of local birds — so as people wait in line to check in and wait to pick up their medications, they see something of the nature of the world around them. I am including more of a variety of nature photos in my photo how-to books, photos that do more than show Arches National Park or Yosemite. I include photos from the chaparral, as well as plants and small critters from many locations that highlight things people don’t always see or notice.
Today’s world is increasingly iPodded, video gamed and divorced from contact with nature. Removing words from a dictionary makes it worse. While no photo is a substitute for being outside, a good nature photo can be more than simply decoration. It can encourage people to think about and even explore more of nature.
Posted in Nature, nature photography | 1 Comment »
October 1st, 2009 Rob Sheppard
It is interesting when talking about workflow, that few people discuss the difference between working for excellence and working for perfection. I am guilty of that as well. It is very easy to talk about all of the things a photographer can and “should” do in Lightroom or Photoshop, but not get into the decision making process of why do something in that workflow at all.
Over the years, I have often thought about the difference between striving for excellence and or for perfection. I have struggled with this at times, too, but today, I recognize that striving for excellence is a good goal, while striving for perfection will lead more often to frustration and disappointment. It is impossible to ever be perfect, yet we can reach excellence. There was a well known book called, On Excellence, by John Kenneth Galbraith, years ago that really helped me face this issue. Excellence means you set a high standard and work to achieve that. That is generally possible. Perfection is always an elusive goal because as humans, we can never be perfect.
Perfection as a goal gives another problem — how to deal with choices. If you must be perfect, that means there is always the possibility of a better option than what you are doing. That can drive you crazy. If you strive for excellence, you know what that means and when you make a choice that gets you there, you need do nothing else.
This strongly affects how we deal with workflow. If you strive for excellence, then the choice between 8-bit or 16-bit files is easy — if your image has reached a standard of excellence at 8-bit, why bother with the effort that 16-bit requires? Or color space — if AdobeRGB does the right job for your photo, why worry about other color spaces, no matter what anyone else says?
This affects things like using specific tools in Lightroom or Photoshop. I know that some photographers start thinking that they have to use certain tools because someone said they had to, so they need to do that for some ideal of processing perfection. Yet, if your image has reached a level of excellence for what you want and you never touched the Graduated Filter or Adjustment Brush in Lightroom, then why bother taking the time or effort? If you constantly think you need to do “something else” to your photo (which will always happen if it has to be perfect as you can never reach perfection), then you will constantly fiddle with controls you don’t need. That will mess up your time and effort with your photos in the computer.
For nature photographers, too, I think we might learn a bit from nature on this one. You could argue how perfect nature is. Some people will say it is, but then others will point out “problems”, but both are really perspectives outside of nature itself. Nature doesn’t strive for perfection — look at all of the variation in a given species of plant or animal — perfection implies no variation. Nature does strive for excellence, in a sense, because anything less means you don’t survive. A wolf doesn’t care about hunting with perfection, simply the excellence that brings down the prey or not. A flower doesn’t care about perfection, only about excellence that ensures pollination occurs.
Striving for excellence does not mean that if you achieve it, that you do not look to improve your skills. I am finding, for example, that I am tending to pay more attention to opening up dark tones and the details there in my images than I did either in the traditional darkroom or when I first started working on images in the computer. I think that is improving my shots. I have always striven for excellence, but as I learn new things, I adapt my work to that.
Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Equipment thoughts, Lightroom, Nature, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements | Comments Off
