Learn Actual Photography First!

I’ve been seeing a lot of talk once again about retouching images and how only old school photographers say things like “get it right in camera”. Or people talking about how photography is different today than it was 30 years ago.

Today; Photoshop is a part of photography. Or so they try to tell me.

Or it’s elitist to tell people to get it right in camera and that means that people shouldn’t use Photoshop.

And yet; No one is saying don’t use Photoshop. However; if the best thing about your images comes from software should you really call yourself a photographer?

All this they’ve been retouching photos for 100 years is ignorant. It’s ignorant because it’s largely spouted by people who’ve never made a living shooting and processing film.

Film had numerous components and was often flawed. Film also needed chemicals to process it.

Between the celluloid (type and age), chemical mixtures (type and age), temperatures, humidity or lack there of and paper film was an unpredictable medium.

Having said all of that; images were still properly exposed in camera as best as we could get it. This was done because most photographers had no access to “retouching” or services that did it.

Retouching was pretty limited to dodge and burn since film often lacked the dynamic range of today’s sensors; grease pencils, and literal painting and airbrushing in the 80’s.

These days; any schmuck with a camera can take poorly lit and exposed photos and spend hours making them look like they were done right and have a bunch of sycophants hailing them as a great photographer.

Perhaps we should think of photography as what happens IN the camera and everything else is ancillary to photography; rather than lumping what people do in their computers in with photography.

I’m going to say this and I imagine I will get quite a bit of backlash from those of you who are triggered by what I’m saying but I’m going to say it anyway.

Using presets to make your shitty photos look pretty doesn’t make you a photographer. It makes you someone who takes shitty images and turns them into good images after using someone else’s hard work and presets.

You’re truly no different than Instagram models who put filters on the photos they take to make them look good.

So; perhaps instead of focusing so much on your “edits” you focus on putting in the time to develop your skills in lighting and exposure so that you can become a real photographer.