I've been struggling with my photography as of late. I watched way to many Youtube photography channels on the matter and have been swimming in the technical aspects of the art and it became daunting. I was shooting everything in 'raw' and spending way too much time editing my pictures in post like everyone i was studying on the internet. I couldn't see the forest from the trees. I wasn't happy with my photos as I was doing too much to them in post and feeling fraudulent.
After a great discussion with a fellow photographer about this he gave me some sage advise. Go back to JPG. It'll make your life easier. What I got out of our discussion was this - Raw gives you way more information to work with yes - but that can be debilitating. The images once in your post picture production software of choice will always look 'flat' as there is a ton of extra digital information that you have to work with. My take on this now is that I shouldn't have to rely on all this extra information to fix my photos if I take them well enough to begin with.
I flipped back to JPG and haven't looked back. When I take the memory card out of the camera and put it into Cyberlink PhotoDirector the picture looks more or less like I saw in the view finder. A bit richer - not so 'flat'. I am literally now touching up my photos in a minute or two as opposed to ten or twenty in RAW. The results are far more pleasing - at least to me and really - that's who I am doing this for. Me.
I was loosing the joy and getting stuck on the technical. I was going down the trap of wanting to buy better gear to make my photos better. I am what I am - an amateur hobbyist photographer. Being honest with myself has been liberating and I am back to taking snaps because I'm inspired instead of trying to proove I can do it.
These two photos are the first of my flip back to JPG. I am very pleased.
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