I'm so glad you found me! I'm a San Francisco photographer, and this blog charts my journey in the ever-evolving world of photography. One of the things I love about photography is that it's a journey, not a destination. I'm constantly learning and meeting wonderful people. Please peruse the blog to your heart's content, then check out my website and feel free to contact me! (I love hearing from you.)

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow." – Imogen Cunningham

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” – Edward Steichen

Day 126 (July 15) - Experiment


So far, I've kept my use of Lightroom to what I thought would make the images look more like the reality I saw. I edited, sure, but I kept it restrained. Well, today on Scott Kelby's blog there was a post from David Nightingale, also known as Chromasia, and his story went kind of like this (he told it much better): in processing bad images he learned how to create better ones.

And this is a kind of learning I've been doing too; processing my images makes me think about what I could have changed at the time of capture and I truly believe it has made me a better photographer. But a lot of images (the really bad ones, and the just sort of 'meh' ones) I just don't process. I ignore them, I delete them, and then I forget them.

But. Today. I decided to rescue one. Not a full rescue, mind you. And maybe not a successful one. I don't absolutely love it, and I'm sure there are some terrible mistakes I made in the processing, but I think it was a good exercise. And one I'll try to repeat in the future.

Okay, and now here's the before picture. I almost don't want to show it, because it's so blah, and why did I take it in the first place? But brutal honesty is good for the soul, right? Please bear in mind this is a raw file with no processing: no sharpening, no color adjustment, nada. All the stuff my camera could have done for me to make it better, I said "No thanks. I'll do it myself."


If you're curious, this was taken during a rainstorm at school yesterday.