Utah Sunset – Still cold at night

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Utah Sunset – Still cold at night

Taken November, 2012.

I was trying to describe how I see things when I shoot and why I love digital editing to some friends last week and I landed on how to describe my thinking and process. Pressing the shutter release is just the beginning (I’ve mentioned this before). There is an image that I see. The camera records the image, but the camera settings and software render the image in such a way that in order for me to get to the image I saw when I pressed the shutter release, I’m coaxing information out of the image with software designed to coax. The information is all there, but the image I see is hidden. The software is a chisel. Most of the time these days, I’m not adding or subtracting from an image. I’m not adding sunbursts or clouds. I’m just using sliders and settings so that I can get to the image I saw when I took the photo. The camera sensor has captured all of this information. I’m just trying to get at it, bat it around a bit and get to the image I saw and the image I know is there in the raw data.

Those little dark wisps against the sky needed a nudge. The dark blue sky at the top of the frame needed a couple of pushes. The clouds at the bottom of the frame were blown out by the lemon fresh sun. It didn’t take long to get what I wanted. That’s the rewarding part. There have been times when I got the image I saw straight out of the camera. But given how I see, with the bum eye and all, I don’t think there is a camera in existence that records information the way I do.