shoot or edit?

[sheldonc]

Hi, this is probably a dumb question in the wrong place!

I'm pretty new to this hobby and reading up on here you can get pretty carried away with what you could be doing

Should I be spending time taking lots of pictures to improve my technique and playing around with my cameras settings to fully understands the effects of my actions or should I be spending time using an editing tool to see what I can do to what I have already done?

I only currently have iphoto on my MAC for this which I think is pretty basic so I guess I also need advice as to whether I should settle on this at the moment or whether I should get / buy something else

thanks in advance for the advice

[DannyF1966]

A bit of both, but concentrate on getting the camera settings, composition and so on right before you move onto post-processing. There's nothing to stop you coming back to a photo six months later to do some post processing on it.

Rule of thumb is, if the original picture is a bad one, no amount of post processing will make it a good one (but rules are meant to be broken!)

[janepettigrew]

Hi there, well there's certainly a few things you can do. Firstly, get to know all the functions of your camera. Go out every day, and shoot something, and try to learn a new feature and use it on the same subject until you fully understand the implications. I saw some advice yesterday - go and read through your camera's manual, and when you come across a setting you don't understand, turn it on and start shooting.

Once you know your tool to the best of it's ability, and your shots are in focus, then you can work your way through the rules of composition in photos. There's the whole rule of thirds, and the Gestalt principles, and dozens of other things.

I teach photoshop, and to be perfectly honest, you can do almost anything in there with post processing, but if you can take the best photo possible, you're most of the way there. Dutti what Danny said above. Postprocessing can almost salvage any photography, but it can't fix out of focus.

iPhoto is basic, yeah, but if you were finding you wanted to seriously get into post processing eventually, then something like Aperture2, or Adobe Lightroom, or Photoshop Elements will give you more choices. Full blown photoshop is really over the top for most people, and Lightroom has most of the cool things a photographer needs.

I hope that's a bit of helpful advice. Oh, and take your camera out every day. Every single day and shoot something, even if it's the same thing with different settings, to really understand them. That's a perfect start.

Good luck. Look forward to seeing some shots.
Cheers
Jane

[vsa]

I learned Photoshop before I even had a camera (....yea I had point and shoot but I didn't know anything but that... point and shoot). I like how I can correct most of my mistakes in Photoshop and so much more.

But like everyone before me have said you better learn how your camera works and what you can do with it.

good photo + no pp = still a good photo
crappy photo + great pp = most likely still a crappy photo
great photo + great pp = win

And remember to have fun when you're out there shooting.

[Chip]

I agree with the others. If you get the shot right, or close to right in camera, if the foundation for whatever happens next with that photo. You have the option to do no PP, a littlePP, or a lot of PP, but you're at least starting off with a good image - which will decrease the time needed in PP and make for a better end product.

For software, The Gimp is free, pretty powerful and works well on my iMac. You might give it a try.

Have fun shooting!

[sheldonc]

Thank you all for the advice - not sure I'll get to shoot everyday but I guess it's a good target to set myself. I'll also try to post something for criticism every day that I do shoot as that seems to be one of the informative areas on here.. I have put a picture of one of my boys in the portrait section this morning titled Snap of Son so if any of you have a chance to comment - that would be great!

Cheers

Sheldon

[spookie5150]

One mistake I made, and I think others make is regarding photo editing programs as tools for "correcting" images. Yes, they can be used for this, but only in a limited way. With this approach you pay less attention to getting a quality photo to begin with.

In my opinion you should learn the camera first. Shoot as much as possible and work your way up to shooting full manual. Working with iPhoto will serve you very well for this, as you will see mistakes you've made when working on your images and you can work on correcting those on your next shoot.

In my opinion photography and digital artistry are two seperate artforms. Both completely valid, but not the same. If you want to be a photographer, learn your camera. If you want to be a digital artist, learn software.

[FullAperture]

I my opinion. Shooting every day and challenging yourself with a guide as to how you're going to shoot today, or how often, or picking an abstract word from the dictionary. It works awesome to get the creative juices in my brain flowing when I've hit a wall. Writing too. Get up and write for about 200 words. Whatever comes to mind. Try it for a week.

HOWEVER. You can shoot everyday, but unless you push yourself to see something differently every day, your ideas will become stagnant and your enthusiasm will fade.

I'm a photo manupulator and as aweseome as photoshop is... you can't learn it if you don't have it. So how will you practice it? iPhoto is wonderful to organize, and light touch up of a photo, but it's no post processing monster to learn. It's made for the average person to touch up or crop their everyday photos. So if you want to learn post processing, get a trial version of photoshop or buy aperture and get to it.

That being said. There are some pictures that no matter how much you try to fix during post processing, they just arent worth the time fixing (lets say 20 mins to fix each and you took 30) You could have corrected the shooting environment in 10 seconds and gotten better results for the whole set of 30 pics you took. If you lack the time you'll now be posed with the choice of "which photos do I want to salvage?"

Learn your camera. (by the way what cam are you using?) GET CREATIVE. Post process as you review regularly but don't expect that to fix your photos. All great photo manipulations start with well taken pictures.

In a nut shell. Stop using your cam's preset modes. Shoot AV, TS or MANUAL to understand what each setting does. Learn about aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Learn about light modifiers. Go on ebay and buy a 20" 5-in-1 reflector for $12 and learn to use it. Get a profile and update it often with new photos on a site like www.deviantart.com or www.flickr.com . You'll get input and find other new photographers who are into what you are. Finally, get an old version of Photoshop or get a free trial or buy Lightroom or Aperture and learn the replicate the effects you're fond of. Find tutorials online in places like www.psdtuts.com Then get creative and come up with something of your own. Most of all have fun and don't give up. Check out my YouTube vids for some examples of photo editing tutorials.

Good luck and welcome to DPS!

[sheldonc]

"Learn your camera. (by the way what cam are you using?) GET CREATIVE. Post process as you review regularly but don't expect that to fix your photos. All great photo manipulations start with well taken pictures."

I'm using a Nikon D90 & have 2 Nikon lenses - 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 & 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 - probably went a bit mad but it's a good incentive to make use of my investment!

I think I'll wait until I've taken a good batch of photos before I start using any of the better processing software - I noticed that I can get 30 day trials on Photoshop & Aperture 2 so I guess that will be the next step

As I live by the sea I thought I'd go & try the zoom out on some of the wind surfers and try playing around with shutter speed - maybe because it's Easter weekend but there isn't a soul out there - not even sailors either!

Thanks for the advice

Sheldon

[FullAperture]

Nice choice! Well I'd love to see your work so if you post them online in flickr or DevArt send me a message and I'll add you to my buddy list. Highly suggest looking into a 10-20mm sigma lens. Search that lens on flickr. It's an awesome landscape lens.