Over the last year I've starting getting into photography in a seriously amateur way. For my own sake, and for those who are interested, I thought I'd detail my experiences and what I've learned. That's kinda the whole point of this blog.
The camera I use is the Canon Powershot SX220HS (I'm looking to upgrade to a DSLR or Compact System / Micro 4/3rds camera in the next year). It has full manual controls which means you can do a lot with it and more importantly, learn how photography actually works and make better photos. I was lucky enough to get it on sale for $200. It's a very
well reviewed camera and
my experience has been very positive. It's pocketable and takes
good quality shots straight
out of camera (although, not usually enough contrast for my tastes).
However, there's way more to photography than just the camera.
This, for example, is three photos taken using stitch assist, then imported to my iPad and stitched together using the iPhone app
AutoStitch, then retouched (saturation, fill light, contrast, and tilt-shift) in the iOS app (and best photo editor on the iPad IMO) "Snapseed".
I.e. there's taking the photo (composition, lighting etc) and processing photos. My brief experience has taught me it is equally important to post-process photos. I don't have one method, but I've evolved a workflow over the last year. It will change as soon as I upgrade to a DSLR because I imagine I'll start shooting RAW instead of JPEG, and what I currently do only works with JPEG. More importantly, I'm using either very cheap or free software. I.e., I'm nowhere near to doing it how
a professional does it. Anyway, here's the brief overview of what I do:
- Take a bunch of photos - main shooting modes: aperture priority, full manual (especially when bracketing photos to create a HDR), shutter speed priority, full auto, colour accent, stitch assist (to create a panorama).
- Most of the time I transfer photos to my iPad using the camera connection kit. If I'm doing a HDR, I slot the SD card into laptop and copy bracketed images to my "To HDR" folder. Or, if I just want to batch edit a bunch of snapshots without too much editing or effort, I import straight to Picasa (which is where they all end up eventually).
- Ruthlessly triage the photos. Will I really every want to look at this photo again? More importantly, can I be bothered to spend any time processing it?
- Process the photos. On my Windows 7 laptop predominantly using Picasa, Photomatix and Photoshop Elements. On my iPad, the most frequently used apps are Snapseed, AutoStitch, Photoforge2, Photogene, and iPhoto (which I managed to get on my 1st gen iPad this way). I will get to specifics of some of them later.
- Label folders in Picasa by date and subject. Import photos processed on my iPad to my laptop over WiFi using PhotoSync. Much easier than having to go through the horrendous mess that is iTunes.
- Star the good photos.
- Click "sync to web". I've set up Picasa so only the starred photos are synced to the web. If no photos are starred then all the photos in the folder are synced. I am currently grandfathered in to Google's nice and cheap $5 per year for 20 gigabytes of storage for Picasa Web.
After the break I'll go back to step 4 and look at the ways I process photos in a little more detail.
