post growth

i'm always working on taking pictures. i figure that great lighting is the key to great pictures. so, mastering lighting is the most important thing i can do. however, every now and then i realize that lighting isn't everything.

for example, this picture. i took this picture a year ago. i processed it, decided it wasn't very good, and left it to sit on my hard drive, forgotten. then the other day i was going through my old pictures and i came across it. so i reprocessed it, and decided it was decent. so here i am posting it.

what's interesting to me isn't how i thought it was crap, and now i think it's good. the interesting part of the story is that how i go about doing my post-processing has changed dramatically in the last year. i used to emphasize dark, ominous shadows and heavy handed contrast. now i emphasize a wider tonal range and crispness.

i think the best thing about my day-to-day practice regimen is that i have to go from start to finish, all the way through the process. set up lights, take pictures, edit pictures, run post processing, photoshop where necessary, export, post..... by practicing the entire workflow, i slowly, gradually improve step by imperceptible step. until a year later i can rework an image from something crap into something decent.