Day 127 in a Year of my Life

Well, I have finally bitten the bullet and ordered Photoshop CS6 Software.

When I first took up photography, I was very ANTI Photoshop.  I was very opinionated and let everybody know how I felt about it.

I believed that photography was about taking great photos and that it was more important to know how to use your camera and take the perfect photo.  It was not about taking average photos and then fixing them with photoshop.

Then I learned that it's impossible to capture in camera, what you actually see.  The colour is rarely as vibrant, the exposure can rarely be perfect for everything that you want to fit in your photo, there needs to be a little sharpening, a little contrast.

You can use many different editing programs to do these things.

I have discovered that in the old days with film cameras, there were processes used in the dark room that could tweak the exposure, add or reduce contrast,  sharpen images, dodge and burn among many other things to manipulate photos.

With the new digital era, editing programs and software, do the same thing, just faster and easier.

So I've spent two years learning how to use my camera in manual mode, and learning how to take a compositionally sound photo, plus some basic editing skills (there is still SO much more to learn regarding everything that I've just mentioned).

I look at photographers who I know personally and the work that they produce using photoshop as an aid.  I also look at professional photographers and how creative and artistic they are with their photos, also using photoshop.

Then there are the more famous photographers like Annie Leibowitz, Simon Powell, Steve McCurry, Anne Geddes to name a few (that you may know), who use photoshop to create art.

So this brings me to my current situation.  To take my photography a step further and see what I can produce using a professional editing tool like Photoshop.  To see just how creative I can get and how artistic my work can become ... beyond a clean, sharp photo.

This is my new challenge and something that I hope will take me out of my current trauma induced funk and into a magical new world of inspiration and imagination.

Watch this space and hopefully, some time in the near future, when I've mastered a few photoshop skills, you can see a change and a difference in my work.

I feel a little bit excited about this new development.

Today, it stopped raining long enough for me to spend a bit of time out on my trike with camera in hand.

The lorikeets were out in full force.

Today, I am grateful for friends who encourage and nudge me onto new pathways, helping me see some light through the dimness.  I feel a new spark of energy, like a tiny ember, glowing within and it feels good.

Nite all.