My Approach To Photography

[natashasoftpaw]

Originally posted at http://www.lupinia.eu/photo/my-approach.htm

Lately, as a result of a few of my photos getting an incredible amount of attention on 500px.com, I've been exploring the profiles of a large number of users there (I check out everyone who interacts with my

Comments

[schnee]

And there are a number of purists and old-school film shooters who consider this sloppy form; in their minds, the shot must always be perfect the moment you capture it. It shouldn't need post-processing, and "fixing it in post" is a sign of failure as an artist. I respect this approach, but I don't agree that it's the One True Way of photography, nor is it one I'm in a hurry to adhere to. It's an approach that makes perfect sense if you're shooting film: It's too expensive to do a lot of bracketing with different settings, and unless you own a darkroom and are an expert chemist, there isn't much post-processing that can be done. So, a successful film shooter must, first and foremost, be an absolute master of technical precision. But a digital shooter? Not so much.Totally agree. And I think people who insist that no post-processing should ever be used are simply lazy

[natashasoftpaw]

The key is not to focus on how much was done in post, but to look at the overall whole of the image. I can analyze the techniques used on any image, and almost always answer the "how'd they do that?" question, but it doesn't impact the artistic merit of the finished product. As far as I'm concerned, everything you can do to an image is fair game, the final image is all that matters; there are some styles I don't care for, but they're still fair and valid creative techniques :-)