Thursday, October 08, 2009

Geese on the mall


Geese on the mall, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

Here's another image from my walk on the National Mall last Tuesday. I messed around with camera settings for awhile. This one was taken with the setting at "Faithful" - manual exposure, RAW format. I thought the effect was interesting - it looks like a painting rather than a photo to my eyes. Comments are welcomed - what do you think?

2 comments:

John Williams said...

Yest I think you have caught a nice image. Of course one could manipulate the image ad infinitum on the computer too but its not the same as one straight from the horses mouth, er camera.

Andi Wolfe said...

John - this isn't the raw image file. I have adjusted brightness, contrast, and the standard stuff one would do in Aperture or Photoshop or Lightroom. Digital photos that are done in RAW format have to be "developed" using software.

Most people let the camera do the developing by using a manufacturer's setting (e.g., landscape, portrait, macro, etc.) The jpegs that result from those presets have been developed by software built into the camera, and you don't have any control over the image quality and appearance. Instead, you trust the camera software to do it all for you.

I think there is a lot of misconception about what software packages are used for in modern photography. When someone says "that's been photoshopped" the connotation is that the image has been manipulated to mislead or misrepresent the photographic image in some way or another. In reality, software packages are used in an analogous fashion to darkroom techniques that were used with film development and photographic printing.

As in traditional film photography, it takes more than a good eye to get a good photograph. The processing and printing are important components to photographic art.