I have a dirty secret… | Red Deer Photographer

When I first started practicing the craft of photography as an adult – with a DSLR – I invested in Photoshop and then – I remember sitting and staring at my computer thinking to myself, “what do I do”?  If you are a photographer, there is a good chance that at least some of you reading this have sat where I was, scratching your head and then heading to Amazon to see what kind of book you could buy to try and help you trace a small path to begin understanding the labyrinth that Photoshop is.  I was sure not prepared for the blank grey screen and small menu it offered me…with no help button.  Where on EARTH was that handy paper clip that used to be attached to Windows ’98 (I think) that would help answer your questions you had?  Yah…I am that old.

Anyway, I struggled for weeks trying to figure out Photoshop.  It wasn’t personal…really I just wanted to learn how to use it.  How complicated should that have been?  Apparently quite so.  I would visit forums, chat rooms, instruction pages…whatever I thought would help.  Turns out I met a lot of great people that offered their knowledge but without actual instruction I was hooped.

Then, a very special photography friend introduced me to Actions.

Actions were my life saver.  If you don’t know what an action is, it is a handy little recipe card that your computer ‘plays’ and then follows the instructions to, then you get a desired outcome.  Outcomes are subjective depending on the action used, the author of that action and of course the image and the feeling you are trying to convey.  Who makes the actions you may be wondering?  Typically extremely talented photographers and artists who were smart and learned Photoshop the right way right from the start.  There was so much I didn’t even know I didn’t know – that make sense?

So what is this dirty secret I had to share?  What on earth would I have to share with you?

I use actions.

I have used actions since the first time I actually created an image with Photoshop – an image that still hangs on my wall to this day.  I don’t know how I came about the author of the actions, but this beautiful lady also had some tutorials that actually showed me how to USE these tutorials!  I was amazed and in awe that I was finally getting somewhere with my fancy Photoshop program.

Years go by and here we are…still using actions.  To be honest however I have learned to use what I have collected from a lot of different photographers like an artists pallet that are pre-created to include all of the colours, tones and textures that the original artist loved.  Those artists have beautiful visions and I always bought the packages that so closely matched the edits that I loved….and I made them work!  I have won multiple awards through several different international photography contests and have shown that I can edit a great image…but its not enough anymore.  I want to learn how to do this on my own.

The picture at the top of this blog post I am proud to say is my very first image that I have hand edited from the very beginning, from working with white balance, to levels, to tones, to exposure – everything was by hand, and that I am very happy with what I created.  It is balanced, warm, captures the exact moment of her running through the field chasing a little frog that she had seen at her feet.

This isn’t a complete reform post…I still plan to use the tools I have invested heavily in over the past several years.  I know how to use them to perfection – I just also want to be able to do it so that I have more creative control over and speed over my images.

Thank you so much for reading – turns out it wasn’t terribly salacious but hopefully a good read.

Suzanne
XO