The Ingredients of a Digital Image

Tuesday early evening. Rob took Derek to football practice and the twins are watching Arthur. I feel like I have been glued to my computer lately, and very little has been blogging or fun. I went to a photography seminar yesterday and learned alot! As I have just switched to digital there was alot for me to learn, like almost everything. It was a great day, I have tweaked some stuff I was doing and switched things up here and there and I am thrilled about it. One of the major questions, pleadings, gasping for last breath questions that seem to pop up all through the day was, "how do I manage my workload?" Going from a film photographer to a digital photographer is a totally different ball game. With film, you get what you get, you can remove a blemish or a stray hair, but basically the picture is put in an oven, cooked, and cooled down all before you ever see the final print. Digital is a whole different monster, a beautiful monster, but a monster none the less. It starts in your camera, balancing white balance so skin tones are true - every time your lighting changes, then downloading the lovely pictures just taken, then managing the photo's - the keepers and trash, then sending everything to photoshop to tweak, burning - dodging, upping the color, taking away the color, sharpening the lines... then printing... what form - there are dozens to choose from, who, how long...and then last but not least storage off all of this on a hard drive, back up cd's and whew! take a breath, now start over. Apparently there are photographers who used to have leisure time spent however they choose, now they live in photoshop. The key is managing your work flow. I hope I am on the way to that from the very beginning, getting some important programs and actions that will do the work for my tired little fingertips. The seminar was a great success and I am grateful to Elaine, Tom and Rob who took care of things on the homefront while I was gone.