Why I Stopped Worrying About Photo Editing and Focused on Getting it Right

As my relationship with the act of recording moments strengthens, I ask myself if photo editing is something I want to do, or rather something I have to do.

Photo editing has become synonymous with the process of taking photos. No matter what photographic genre you practice, the likelihood is that after each shoot you load up your images and start making adjustments. Whether it’s a slight tweak to the highlights or a big pump in contrast, the editing room is where you bring your photo to life. But why? Why are so many of us conditioned to think a photo isn’t a photo until it has been processed in post-production? I decided to free myself of the editing shackles and I haven’t looked back since. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Continue reading…

6 Ways Photographers Sabotage Themselves

IbarionexPerelloThePhoblographerSabatoge01Making a living as a photographer has never been more challenging. We’re being asked to deliver more work for less money. Expectations  for transfer of copyright are being demanded in the form of a buyout or work for hire agreement. Newspapers are letting go of their photo departments and transferring the picture responsibility to a writer, toting nothing more than a smartphone. And new photographers are entering the competitive arena who are willing to work for far less than a seasoned professional would ever consider fair.

Yet, despite all these external challenges, the greatest obstacles lay not with others but with ourselves. It is often the choices that we make not just as photographers, but as business people the reduce the viability of making a living as a photographer. Here are some common ways that many photographers self-sabotage their work and their careers and some remedies to combat them.

Continue reading…