{"id":26387,"date":"2022-07-19T15:40:28","date_gmt":"2022-07-19T22:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=26387"},"modified":"2022-07-19T15:40:28","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T22:40:28","slug":"how-i-fell-in-love-with-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/how-i-fell-in-love-with-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Fell in Love with Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
\"Cosina<\/a>
This is almost the same as my first camera.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

I\u2019ve been an enthusiast photographer since December 1986. Mum, Dad, my brother and I were on our way to the UK for a holiday when it happened, in a camera shop in Lucky Plaza, on Singapore\u2019s Orchard Road. Lest you think I was buying, I wasn\u2019t. My brother was, and as he was choosing his new Nikon, he thrust his old Cosina CS-1 SLR<\/a> with 70-210 mm Sigma lens at me. I was now the proud owner of my first camera. In true \u201cgrandfather\u2019s axe\u201d fashion, I still have the same camera today, though I have replaced the body five times and the lens, errr, a few more times than that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In the film era (1986-2006 for me) I was happy if any photo \u201cturned out\u201d and was very occasionally excited by a particularly good shot. When the digital era dawned for me in 2004, with a Fuji S3000<\/a> 3 megapixel compact camera, not much changed except I started taking more photos. There was still very little that happened between taking the shot and \u201cthe final result\u201d. I didn\u2019t even fix off-level horizons.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When I got my first DSLR, it just took better photos, still without me doing much at all. Eventually, I was convinced to explore RAW photography and things got more interesting, as there was a lot more leeway to make photos look \u201cgood\u201d. Looking back at published photos, I seem still to have done very little to them apart from fixing exposure and maybe cropping (only ever to the original 3:2 ratio) for many years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Gradually, I learned more and more about how to tweak and prod my photos to get a better result. I went through a series of software changes from nothing to Lightroom<\/a> to Aperture<\/a>, back to Lightroom, and to Luminar<\/a> 3 and 2018. Still, most of what I was doing was basic \u201cfixes\u201d to my photos. Only occasionally, I would spend some more time \u2014 Luminar was great for \u201cpushing the envelope\u201d to get some punchy results that weren\u2019t strictly \u201caccurate\u201d. But it was Luminar\u2019s failing \u2014 constant course changes in the product roadmap, while breaking promises \u2014 that led me to look at PhotoLab<\/a> 3. That\u2019s when photography began changing for me; It started to become something I love.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I reviewed PhotoLab 3 for the NosillaCast in January 2020<\/a>, only a few months after I started using it. I won’t rehash a full review here, as much of what I said then about version 3 still applies to version 5 that is on sale today, though there have, of course, been improvements.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

PhotoLab\u2019s \u201csecret sauce\u201d lies in their \u2018modules\u2019, which contain profiles for supported camera body and lens combinations (you should check compatibility<\/a> with your equipment before downloading) that are built by measuring the actual equipment in DxO\u2019s own labs. These mean you get the absolute best quality from your RAW images with corrections for vignetting, aberrations, and distortions, and astonishing, edge-to-edge sharpness. I raved in my review about the sharpness achieved, and the remarkable PRIME noise reduction which works on the RAW data itself.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Marina Bay Sands Hotel at night, as seen from Gardens by the Bay.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Next, I started hanging out in the DxO forums, learning more and more about PhotoLab\u2019s tools. As I learned more, I started caring more about finessing many of my photos. I realised that PhotoLab was able to get much higher quality photos from my camera, which in turn encouraged me to make them the best they could be with thoughtful processing. I was so impressed I decided to revisit the photos I had taken in Singapore six months before I bought PhotoLab. Some of the nighttime shots, in particular, took on a whole new appearance when PRIME noise reduction was applied. Then something special began to happen \u2014 I began to fall in love with some of them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

PhotoLab 4 introduced an astonishing leap forward from PRIME noise reduction, with the machine learning-powered DeepPRIME. This had me revisiting some photos again<\/em> to apply DeepPRIME where it was warranted. Photos that PRIME couldn\u2019t quite tame became candidates for being great. Photos that had been great had the possibility to become excellent.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After I upgraded to PhotoLab 4, I really got the bug for going back to revisit old photos. I\u2019ve re-processed well over 2,000 photos going as far back as 2008. Even photos taken with my 2006-model camera are coming out looking fantastic \u2014 if the work I had put in at shooting time was good enough. I haven\u2019t taken that many DSLR photos recently \u2014 2021\u2019s total count was 134 published out of 772 taken \u2014 but I\u2019m enjoying going back through my old photos and seeing what I can unearth. In addition to the over 2,000 I have re-processed, quite a few previously unpublished photos are now seeing the light of day, and the occasional one of these really hits the spot for me, too.<\/p>\r\n

\"\"<\/a>
It still amazes me how sharp and clear this 2008 shot of a North American P-51D Mustang came out. I’m sure it wasn’t that sharp in 2008!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Perhaps the most telling change is that I no longer use other people\u2019s images for my desktop wallpaper. At home, I have two screens and use four \u2018Spaces\u2019 across each. Every one of the eight screens has one of my photos on it. I get to see these photos every day, and I am not tiring of them because they delight me every time. Or, to put it more strongly, I love<\/em> these photos. These photos made possible, yes, by my camera gear and some knowledge of how to use it, but made loveable by PhotoLab.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I know for many people, phones are good enough to be their only camera, but if you want the feeling of truly creating<\/em> an image to love, I recommend using a dedicated camera and PhotoLab. PhotoLab has unequivocally made me love my photography by getting the absolute best out of my equipment, which then makes me want to tease and prod my images into something truly great; something, maybe, to love. Before PhotoLab, I never actually loved a photograph I had taken. I have been pleased, even proud, of some. But I\u2019d never loved<\/em> them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been an enthusiast photographer since December 1986. Mum, Dad, my brother and I were on our way to the UK for a holiday when it happened, in a camera shop in Lucky Plaza, on Singapore\u2019s Orchard Road. Lest you think I was buying, I wasn\u2019t. My brother was, and as he was choosing his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":26392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[317,1803,96,161,865,174],"class_list":["post-26387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-cameras","tag-photo-editing","tag-photography","tag-photos","tag-processing","tag-software"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/6305682630_4515b35676_w.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26487,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26387\/revisions\/26487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}