editing

Now a lot of people may argue that a good photo does not need to be edited. I disagree. However I don't believe that any photo can be edited into a good photo. Post processing is not a place to fix errors while shoot. It is simply a place to signature your work with a certain look. One cannot take a crappy photo and make it a masterpiece in photoshop or whatever editing program you may have. I could get into the technical aspect of my last statement, but I'd rather not bore you. Instead I've decided to post an original piece next to its final piece, just to show you how much work and attention for detail I integrade into my work.

I can't/don't just click a button and *poof* out comes the final piece. It requires several actions to complete a photo. The first thing that you should have noticed was the slight crop. Not all photos need to be cropped, but the light at the top of the original copy distracts your eye from the main subject, Becky. The first thing your eye goes to in a photo is light. So it's best not to have random light all over your frame. Granted when I took this picture I was leaning off a ledge, so it would have taken longer to get a still photo (because I was holding my breath for the shutter speed) with the correct framing (since I was balancing on an edge).

The second thing you should have noticed was the fact that certain spots are darker and others are lighter. For those who don't know what venietting is, it's an old style of post processing, developed in the darkroom of burning the edges of a photo to make it darker. No burning does not mean setting fire, in this case. Burning is a darkroom technique, also found in photo editing programs, where while the photographer converted his film to prints he would expose the edges to the light longer to make them overdeveloped. Dodging is the opposite; the technique of underexposing light to create light areas on a photo.

Thirdly you should have noticed the treatment on Becky's face. Some photographers, depending on their style edit the skin of their subject to make blemishes, freckles, bruises, scars, etc less noticeable. Again though, this all depends on the photographer and how they want their final piece to look.
Lastly, if you're were really paying attention to detail you might have noticed certain things are missing out of the final copy, such as the ribbon hanging off the raftor. The idea of a photo is to make it easy on the eyes. Minimalistic at best. Too have a very loud, distracting photo could give your viewers a headache. I simply used the stamp tool to erase the ribbon out of the photo.

Also I'd like to note that just because something is digital as opposed to manual, does not mean it is any easier. Yeah, there's the auto function, but you may as well have a kodak disposable. Digital photography still requires knowledge of how to read light, compose a frame, and utilize aperture and shutterspeed, just like manual photography. There is just as much work involved with manual photography as digital, especially if you are creating artwork, not snapshots.