The business of photography is more than meets the eye

So time and time again, photographers find themselves explaining to clients…friends…family…and sometimes just curious people…what all goes into getting their images as perfect as can be.

Let’s face it. If you don’t know much about photography, you might think it’s easy. You pick up a camera and you shoot. Some might even think that just having a professional camera will translate to having beautiful images.

Unfortunately for nonphotographers…and fortunately for photographers…that is not the case.

I won’t go into the whole “business” side of photography (or any business, for that matter)…but in this post, I will focus on the processing. What happens AFTER a photo is taken.

I firmly believe that photography is an art. And half of the “art” occurs post-shutter snap. In the “darkroom.” Nowadays with digital though, rather than having to stay in a dark room with toxic chemicals to develop the film… we can be at a computer with software that can do even more!

Below are a few examples to help show the difference between “straight out of camera” (SOOC) images and other phases. When clients see their full galleries, ALL images are AT LEAST at the tweaked level (shown below)…but most are fully edited. Fully editing images takes oodles of time.

Let’s start with this family session. The SOOC photo wasn’t bad. But see how flat it is? With a bit of adjustment, the tweaked image adds a lil’ something something. But when I added even more love and tenderness… the resulting image was worth it. It’s bright. Vibrant. More in line with what my eye actually saw.

Then this baby set…The SOOC picture is okay until you realize how much better it could look. And oftentimes, I will do a “special edit” for an added something…whether it be antique look…high contrast…or black and white.

I accidentally uploaded a too-small version of this one…but you’ll get the idea. I skipped the SOOC photo because I wanted to only show four. But the first photo in the upper left is the photo SOOC, but turned to grayscale. Even THAT just isn’t good enough. Notice the difference between the fully edited B&W and the one that was sooc? HUGE! VAST!

And lastly… Stephanie’s portrait below. She is a beautiful girl. Hands down. But with the processing, I can bring out the beauty and show her as I truly saw her that day. Cameras can’t capture exactly what the eye sees. (Oh, I wish they could!!!) So with a bit of enhancement, see how stunning the photo can be? (and again, another example of a bit different of a treatment to get a different cooler mood to the same image.

To see more about what goes into the business side of photography and why photography is an investment worth making…go here.