If you follow the blog you know I’ve been learning Photoshop for the past year or so. I’m hardly skilled but I’ve learned a trick or two. In my pursuit of developing the ability to manipulate pictures I realized I lacked of an essential part of Photoshop, the photo.
I went out and bought a Nikon 3300 which is an introductory model DSLR. There is a minimal amount of zoom but the pictures are of higher resolution and I’m still working on the adjustments. With my experience of Photoshop and the newly equipped tools to take a quality photo, I was set on my journey to become… I have no idea.
What the Hell Am I Doing?
Not quite there yet.
At 7pm I decided to venture out into the real world with my camera for the first time. I got in my car and traveled to Wawa to get some food and a coffee for what I wasn’t sure. It was 7:20 when I decided to start following the sun. I was driving west on Washington when I occurred a glaring, beautiful red ball of sun. Picturesque. Wow this is easy I thought. My first time trying to take a picture and I’m following a RED sun that I can’t even think of how many times I’ve seen it like that in my life. I couldn’t decide if I should just pull over and snap a pic or if I should keep driving closer to it so I could get a picture that wouldn’t have traffic lights in it.
I kept driving and before I knew it the sun had ducked behind some clouds and I was driving in a different direction than it was setting. Now I was scurrying to try to find a good picture again but I couldn’t find a good spot and there was no where to get out anyway. Before I knew it it was 8pm, no picture in sight, and I had to go home because it was dark. I took one picture from my car, which was highly dangerous, because I figured I needed to go home with some memory. The first is the original and then what I shopped.
http://what-if.xkcd.com/42/
You could get some really good shots in Norway.
A few tips:
1. Always capture RAW files. They are basically the “negative” of digital imaging, and can easily be adjusted before they even reach Photoshop.
2. Never save anything as a JPG. JPG’s continually reduce their own file size (and thus image information) with each save. Use a working uncompressed TIFF after converting from RAW.
3. If you weren’t driving and had a bit more time, you could have made the same result in camera without ever needing to open Photoshop. Everything reduces information, so the more you can do without Photoshop, the better your image will be.
It is nice to see a younger person actually buy a camera vs. simply always using their phone. Kudos. Thanks for keeping the dream alive.