Somewhat remarkably you might suggest, it has taken me this long to realise that capturing a photograph can be just the start of what it takes to produce an appealing image. Advances in digital photography and the flood of images worldwide has made the learning curve for professional photographers so much steeper…and more urgent if you want to stand out in the crowd.
It has been a bit of an awakening for me recently to study the work of contemporary photographers through their web sites and recognise how much they have done to their photographs in post production. In fact, I regret not paying more attention to the plethora of photography magazines I’ve flicked through over the years to learn many of the techniques I am now seeing.
At the moment – as I am prone to do – I have launched into some of these new techniques with gusto, applying them mainly to my personal work (as I mentioned in earlier entries, the result has tended to produce more art than photography), but I’d expect to settle down shortly and use some of them sparingly in a professional capacity, comforted by the fact I can subtly introduce them when I think they could improve a photograph.
As a professional photographer, it is important to me to be constantly learning about my craft and to have a wide range of techniques at my disposal – even if I rarely use them.
Of course, finding the time to learn, and apply, these techniques is always the challenge
……And I’m certainly not getting much of that at the moment. I returned from Papua New Guinea yesterday, I leave on a seven day assignment to Myanmar (Burma) in two days time and I’m back for only four days before I head off to Saudi Arabia for two weeks ……..(Insh`Allah).
