Hi everyone! This is my very first post on the blog and it's been a long time coming, thanks to some encouragement from friends and family (you know who you are). But, I've also been planning this for a while also. I started photo blogging a while ago when I started shooting with my first DSLR (Nikon D80 at the time) and thought my photos were good. Looking back now, it was embarrassingly horrible. I was over-saturating everything, super high clarity, basically I cranked up all the sliders to 100% like the true amateur I was. And yes, even did some selective coloring. I want this new photo blog to show how I am growing now as a photographer, as well as just show my photos from the studio, my travels, and the stories behind them. I might even throw in some lessons that I have learned along the way,
Let's start with this little gem of a turd. It's one of the first photos from my first blog in 2008 and showcases how bad it was.
Craptastic.
Now, this is something I see a lot of amateurs do. See that glow around the bridge? That is from cranking the Clarity up WAY too high. The whole thing is oversaturated and overall, it's too dark. Oh, and vignetting is also overdone. I basically wanted to do a moody and dark look and just went nuts on every slider that can make it as dark as possible. What I have learned over the years (as someone with no formal training in photography) is to ease back on these sliders. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So, if you are doing one or all of these things, do everyone and yourself a favor: ease up.
Maybe someday, I will revisit the Brooklyn Bridge and re-shoot it.