Post Processing

I have been noticing lately a lot of people speaking of their resentment for post processing. I hear things like "I don't believe in needing to be a computer scientist to take a nice photo." Most of the time when I see people say things like SOOC (Straight out of camera) or "no post processing in this photo", they say it in a way meant to sound like "This photo is better than yours because I didn't need to doctor it with a computer."

It takes a certain level of ignorance to make statements like this. All great photographers have used post processing to some degree (at least all the ones I know of). Ansel Adams spent hours in the darkroom on his photos. Generally when I see these comments attached to photos, they are excuses for pretty lousy photos. Generally they have glaring issues that couldn't even be fixed in post (i.e. very soft out of focus photos, poor composition etc).

I hate to pick on newbies, and I by no means consider myself an expert or pro (because I am NOT), but I am proud of the amount of time I have spent learning what I have learned. Cameras are tools that are used to interpret what we see with our eyes. They are in NO way equivalent to what our eyes are capable of. When you take a photo with a camera the process is just beginning.

The people that make such statements are shooting in jpeg. They don't realize that by shooting their photos in jpeg, their cameras are doing the processing for them. I shoot in RAW as do most advanced photographers (notice I didn't say all). Shooting in RAW leaves all of the available information in the file and allows more creative control over the post processing procedure.