When I first started taking pictures, I refused to edit them significantly.  I might play around with the brightness and contrast, or the exposure settings (for RAW format) but beyond that, I didn’t let myself experiment with tone curves, saturation, sharpening, ad infinitum.

I was too afraid that I would a) learn to rely on such devices to prop up a poor first exposure and b) people would notice my edits and think I was using such devices to prop up a poor first exposure.

While there is certainly merit in trying to get the most you can out of that first click,  this limitation proved somewhat unrealistic.  After awhile I began to notice that my in camera exposures were improving, but my photos lacked that extra pizzaz that I constantly saw in other, more talented photographer’s collections.

Consider these two original, unmodified exposures:

Both are framed decently well. And while they each have their own set of flaws, including slight underexposure, there is nothing terribly debilitating.  Using conservative adjustments, we could certainly improve both of these photos but it would be difficult to break that average barrier.  For the purposes of demonstration, here are the two photos with exposure and white balance adjustments:

A significant improvement to be sure, but both of these photos are still quite drab.  Consider these last two:

The difference and overall effect should be extremely clear.   Both of these have been modified only to the extent that Adobe Lightroom allows.  Neither have been photoshopped.  The second photo has the most editing, persay.  I utilized an adjustment airbrush to decrease a blue highlight that bordered her clothing.  (You can see an example of what I corrected for in the bottom right corner–I missed a spot!)

It is my goal to improve my photo taking skills and photo editing skills.

Editing is not a substitution for good photography, but, just like a darkroom, it is an aid.