
Orange Bus
As I was planning the 50ft memberships I took a few hours and dug through the past few years of my photo library to find images not yet shared here on the site. As I shoveled through thumbnails I noticed a number of images that I liked but needed a little more love in post processing work. Images like the one above of a nearly empty bus in Korea.
Since buying the Fiji X-Pro have been debating on whether or not to ignore internal camera processing and use only RAW images. The trick is that most modern mirrorless and compact digital cameras tend to bake into basic image correction based on the lens and sensor giving you ideal images using internal camera processing yet I still fill up my hard drives with JPG+RAW files because RAWs offer that little bit of extra dynamic range that can come in really handy if I don’t get my exposure right when I take a shot. Still though, most of the time I get pretty close to my ideal shot straight out of the camera and the JPG file is my path of least resistance to getting the image I had in mind as I shot it.
This image above is an example of a mediocre exposure in camera where I blew more highlights than I wanted to so I used the RAW image and more post processing work to flesh it out. In this case I took liberties with the post work and shifted the whole tone of the image to suit my needs, so much in fact, that I ended up saving the adjustments as a new ‘preset’ for future use. One I’m sure you will see used again down the line because my home baked preset/starting points also show the evolution of my own personal taste in the tone of my own photography. It has shifted a number of times through the years because I love to explore new approaches and aesthetics to achieve different moods and emotional responses through the finishing touches of a photograph.
How about you, fellow photographers? JPG or RAW, and do you enjoy the challenge of finding your own way when setting up your post processing or do you like to lean on preset packs such as those from VSCO and others?