Total Meltdown

When Shelly opened up the pandora box of where do you want to take your editing I felt the complete scala of rainbow colors (and beyond) passing by and was actually pretty close to a total meltdown experience.

The question is maybe too large to answer in our life time but it is still a question we have to ask ourselves and is for sure part of every photographers inner monologue and will pop up here once in a while at #stuckinplastic (and we even may find its own #hashtag for it).

When IG (instagram for those of you who are not into acronyms) took filtering and direct feel good snapshots to the next level on the iPhone, we actually took the quick snapshots into the next level and added some magic to it that was previously only reserved to the inner crowd.

And that is great, and we should embrace it, explore it, extend it, use it, filter the heck out of it ....

Now, at the same time it is actually just that, taking your picture to the next level.
It is liberating the inner beauty of what is already there.
It is extrapolating it, magnifying, making it more visible.
But it can only do as much with the RAW (pun intended) material we present it.
A bad composition will not turn into a masterpiece because we apply a Hefe (not the beer, the filter) or a Lord Kelvin to it.

And sometimes we will push a good composition and well lit balance over the edge and ruin the experience with post processing and filters.

I love HDR (especially the kind that takes a tripod, a golden hour, 3 exposures and some heavy post processing in the studio and when you post it no one actually thinks it's HDR and just loves the scene), I love filters, I love artificial lightening, I love cleanup as ultimately the picture needs to be telling the story, be magic, pulling you in, regardless of the tools used …

Now at the same time I love a low ISO, an f stop that gives me a bokeh I cannot artificially recreate and glass that allows me to blow up my pictures full frame without the need to crop (you know the whole macro discussion) and deep down I believe in craft to reach art ...

So, will we discuss "technique" here on #stuckinplastic ?

Yes, for sure (unless you tell us to shut up and tell us you only want the pictures).

So whenever it make sense or Shelly decides to open up the box of magic we may be taking a deep dive in filters and techniques ...

Let us know in the comments below what you think about "post processing" ...

Totally M.