If I had a dollar for every time a student of mine opened Photoshop and unnecessarily worked on one of their photos…that didn’t really need anything, I would be writing this from poolside at my summer home with a blue and frothy drink sitting on a table by my side.
It’s sad that although their are some great things about Photoshop, there are just as many unfortunate things as well. But that’s our world today.
In my online classes with the BPSOP, and in my workshops I conduct all over the place, so many of my fellow photographers started shooting while the digital age was beginning to boom.
They though and are still thinking that you need Photoshop to complete your ‘wall hanger’, as well as all those ill-considered things your camera either tells you do do, or they’re on the back of your camera beckoning you to take the one way path to mediocrity i.e., the Histogram, or those obnoxious blinking lights that are telling you that you’re about to ‘clip a highlight’…sidetracking your thought process while you’re trying to “color outside the lines” and create something worth a damn.
For those of you that sit in a camera club meting eating goldfish and washing them down with diet drinks, while looking at someone’s image that he or she worked on…and damn proud of it, do not, and I repeat, do not think you have to go down that road.
Photographers that use Photoshop or Lightroom to enhance their photos, more than likely (and I’ve seen it for years) will over process a good image. It will become garish, glitzy, and generally in bad taste, and the sad part is that there are those out there (and you know who you are), that will simply love it.
If that’s what you want, then ‘Lay on McDuff'”…(Shakespeare’s Macbeth)!!!!
If you would rather not, then study what makes a good photo as far as the composition, balance, the light, and ways to keep the viewer around longer. I can tell you that it’s a fifty-fifty proposition that you can find that in a camera club.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of my blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
