Since I learned about photography in those prehistoric film days as a high school photographer, we had to develop and print in the school's darkroom. Taking the picture was just the beginning. We made the printed photograph from a negative with an enlarger, tonal graded papers and a couple of different developing chemicals and methods, learned to burn and dodge and crop to fit the columns of the school paper. Today the digital darkroom not only exists, but you already have one if you have a computer. The point of this post is to get some of you to consider learning how to use it.

Here's a picture taken in October at Nairobi National Park (Nikon D810, Nikkor 300mm f/4 lens), as it was shot.




But it's just a snapshot, at this point. There are an infinite amount of possibilities with it, so I just considered one of them to make my point. Imagine it was taken with a slightly grainy B&W slide film? Suppose it was taken with a 5:4 medium format camera, a long time ago, and the film was scratched during development (a frequent occurrence)? Zebras are great subjects for monochrome design juxtaposition, but that single eye is the center point of the picture.




I'm not trying to convince anybody that this treatment is somehow noteworthy, just trying to get you to think outside of the box, literally. It's really not all that hard and in many cases whatever you had in mind when you took the picture can be achieved, even if the negative didn't get the message across. Besides, you may have hundreds or thousands of digital negatives that have potential you weren't considering. Taking the picture is only the first part of photography. (For the curious, I did this post-processing with DxO Optics Pro, but there are many as good or better). I see so many photographs posted on AR with interesting and unique subjects, that really tell a story, that cry out for a just a little bit of fixing up. I am totally self-taught when it comes to software, but there are countless tutorials on the internet (meaning I'm still trying to figure it out).

But even a simple crop, resize and sharpen, with no whizz-bang effects, can improve the interest of a picture.

I started in photography with a 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 Busch Pressman in 1950. Never worked for the school paper (we actually didn't have one) but had several friends with cameras and darkrooms. Wasn't even a club ,just good friends. I graduated to 35mm and have been taking snapshots ever since since I gather you are not doing 'photography' unless you work in the darkroom and change the picture the camera took. I totally dislike darkroom work and have NEVER done it. A couple of years ago I switched to digital as that seemed to be all that was available and made real sense seeing the reduced cost in the medium. I started with a FUJI Pro level (Nikon rework with Fuji sensor and software) and graduated to Nikon DSLR's ending with a pair of D2x's and Lenses to 400mm. That is when the disenchancement set in. So many things to set and if you don't do post processing so many things you can't fix with the camera. Just far too much hassle for me especially since I totally hate PC's. Now have a couple of simple to operate Rangefinder digitals and am occaisonally taking a few snapshots as the digital world really ruined what had been a great hobby for me for so many years. I suppose I could go back to film but the fire to do so is just not there anymore.

Zimbabwe,

Taking pictures with film is definitely photography. But with the exception of taking positives (slides) which you are projecting or you're shooting with Polaroid, the negative has to be turned into a print. Which will be only one version of an infinite number of what "the camera took". If you are not doing it yourself then you aren't making any of the decisions about what that print will look like; you stopped at the point you pressed the shutter button. Maybe it's being printed by a machine with its own set of defaults and best guesses, or maybe its being printed by a Master Printer who is discussing with you what you want. That was all pretty complicated stuff. I shot a lot of slide film way back when and the percentage of keepers was pretty low, probably lower than what I would get with a modern DSLR shooting jpegs. Negatives gave a lot more latitude that could be corrected at the print phase.

Digital is different. Now of course almost everyone has a personal computer and there is free to relatively inexpensive software which can do almost anything you can imagine. It's still a little complicated, but you don't have to go to a darkroom, you can do it wherever your computer happens to be.

For me, pushing the shutter button only ends the first part of the process. The second part is in the (digital) darkroom. You can apply creativity to it, or not. I feel your pain with respect to the amount of time spent in front of a computer doing post-processing, but that was a conscious decision on my part. I could just shoot jpeg files with the occasional in-camera tweak and let it be, but I'm constantly compelled to make it "better". Sort of a curse, but I don't live in the desert southwest and there are a lot of cold, gray, rainy days on Planet Europe and it's still better than watching TV.

Photography is just a messy intersection of physics and subjectivity. I try to avoid the semantics of describing where it starts or ends, or whether it's ever art or not. I do note however that almost every photograph I thought significant or interesting involved some sort of darkroom work or digital post-processing to get the final result.

One of my daughters borrowed my Nikon FM and has been shooting nothing but Tri X for the last few months. There are still places that will make a contact print or enlargements. It's not totally dead.

But you are definitely right about one thing, if you're not enjoying it then there is no reason to force yourself to do it. That's for paying jobs generally called work.

Thank you , Wink. You make a valid point twix photos and pictures, but one must have " an eye", no pun intended. Good post.

Thanks Wink. For me photography now is just figuring out the manual controls and feeling like I'm really taking the photo rather than the programming in the camera. Digital photography lets a young novice like me pick up a camera and just shoot shoot shoot away to my heart's content and then sort through the good, the bad, and the ugly, so through that I figured out how I like to frame and compose photos but also develop a sense of what is photo-worthy. However what I did not develop is knowing things like what aperture setting to use and white balance, or what the hell the ISO number even means. That is partially because my first cameras, cheap Nikons, only had an auto setting to take care of that (a nice auto setting).

So now I am still using the auto settings a lot but alongside them using and experimenting with the manual controls, and learning through that. To me it's the difference between just spontaneously shooting and collecting whatever results I get, to knowing what results I want and directing the camera how we'll get to them (well, at least trying to).

I do some basic contrast and brightness adjusting but am unsure whether the additional post-photo editing would be worthwhile in most cases for me. I don’t really think I have the knowledge to look at a photo and know what to modify and how. But bottom line, it’s still all fun and enjoyable and a camera will always be with me afield.

Digital photography, especially with the latest generation DSLR's, just begs to have the photographer take total control and use only manually set aperture, shutter speed and white balance. Why? Because you can instantly see the results on the camera back LCD and correct it. Something you couldn't do with film. I shoot RAW+JPG.

Here's what I do (for sunny day with static or slow moving subjects):

1) I manually set the ISO to the camera's base ISO setting, since this is where the camera has the most dynamic range, or ability to record the range of light levels in the scene. On a Nikon D700 that would be ISO 200, on a Nikon D810 that would be ISO 64. Most cameras are at or between that range.

2) if it's a normal sunny or just partly cloudy day I set the white balance to either the sun symbol or the color temperature to 5200°K. They're the same thing on my cameras. (My son-in-law, who is a professional photographer, prefers something warmer, like the cloudy icon or somewhere closer to 5500°K)

3) I set the camera mode to M, for totally manual operation.

4) I then decide what the optimum lens aperture would be depending on the kind of lens and type of scene. If I'm using a wide angle lens and want good depth of field I'll usually use f/11. Many lenses will show image quality degradation from light diffraction at f/16 or f/22. If I'm using a telephoto I will generally use it wide open, whatever that is on the lens I'm using, whether it be f/1.8 or f/2.8 or f/4 or f/5.6 On a standard focal length like my Nikkor 50mm I leave it at f/5.6, since that is where the lens is sharpest. So I manually set the aperture accordingly.

5) I generally don't move the above settings at all during a photo shoot. Now I compose my shot and while looking through the viewfinder I adjust the shutter speed until the exposure meter shows correct exposure. I take a shot and look at the results on the LCD screen, including the histogram. Sometimes it takes a few shots at different shutter speeds before I get what I want. If I like what I see I don't change a thing and all the photos in that shoot (and in that light) will have exactly the same settings.

The advantage of working in manual is the camera isn't going to change settings on me because I've changed the composition of the scene. On auto white balance and autoexposure if you recompose with more sky or more foreground, especially where there is a lot of green, the camera will reinterpret the scene for each photo and change the WB and the exposure. What a pain, since the color rendition will change from shot to shot, the exposure will change shot to shot and you probably won't know what the camera changed so you won't know how to fix it. (Remember, I'm using the sunny day/outdoors situation).

Once you've set the ISO for the camera's optimum capability, and set the aperture for the lens' optimum capability, all you change is the shutter speed, making it easy to correct shot to shot if your light changes by simply looking at the LCD.

The beauty of trying this method is that it costs you nothing, no waiting a few days for the prints to come back, instant results and gratification. The delete button is wonderful for getting rid of the duds. If the sun is out, give it a try. All you could potentially lose is a little time.