Behind the Lens: The Hours No One Sees

There is a part of photography that almost nobody sees.

It happens after I get home.

The camera gets put away.

The batteries go on the charger.

The memory cards come out.

And then I sit down at my computer.

Sometimes for an hour.

Sometimes for several.

And sometimes I look at the clock and wonder how the hell it became two o'clock in the morning.

That's where the other half of photography begins.

Editing.

People see the finished photograph.

They don't see the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of photographs that came before it.

They don't see me flipping back and forth between two images that probably look identical to anyone else.

Which one has the sharper eye?

Which wing position looks better?

Which expression feels right?

Which background is less distracting?

Which photograph actually tells the story?

Sometimes I'll go through hundreds of photographs and choose ten.

Sometimes five.

Sometimes one.

And sometimes...

none.

That's just part of it.

Then comes the editing.

When I first started, I really didn't know what I was doing.

I didn't go to school for photography.

I didn't go to school for Lightroom.

Nobody sat me down and taught me exactly how an image was supposed to look.

I learned the same way I've learned almost everything about photography.

I tried.

I screwed it up.

I watched videos.

I asked questions.

I listened.

I accepted critiques.

I looked at what other photographers were doing.

Then I went back and tried again.

And, inevitably, I screwed something else up.

There were nights when I would sit in front of Lightroom moving sliders back and forth simply trying to understand what they actually did.

Exposure.

Highlights.

Shadows.

Whites.

Blacks.

Texture.

Clarity.

Noise reduction.

Sharpening.

Masking.

Color.

At first, I think I edited based entirely on what looked good to me in that moment.

And sometimes...

it was a little much.

Actually, looking back at some of those early edits, it was probably a lot much.

But I loved them at the time.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Those photographs represent where I was then.

I had to make those edits to eventually understand why I would do them differently today.

Every photograph taught me something.

Every edit taught me something else.

Little by little, I started noticing things I hadn't noticed before.

I started understanding how much the background matters.

How easy it is to oversharpen feathers.

How noise reduction can clean up an image but also destroy the tiny details that make those feathers feel real.

How lifting shadows too far can completely change the feeling of a photograph.

How color can bring an image back to the way I remember seeing it...

or make it look like the bird flew in from another planet.

I started learning that editing isn't about using every tool Lightroom gives me.

Sometimes it's about knowing which tools not to use.

And one of the hardest things I've had to learn is when to stop.

Because when you first discover what all those sliders and masks can do, you want to do everything.

A little more contrast.

A little more sharpening.

Maybe another mask.

Maybe brighten the eye.

Maybe darken the background.

Maybe adjust the color.

Then one more thing.

And another.

Until eventually you've edited the life right out of the photograph.

Somewhere along the way, my thinking started to change.

I stopped asking:

"What else can I do to this photograph?"

And started asking:

"What does this photograph actually need?"

That was a big change for me.

I started developing my own way of editing.

Not necessarily the way somebody else would do it.

Not necessarily perfectly natural every single time.

But mine.

The way I remembered the light.

The way I remembered the colors.

The way that moment felt when I was standing there.

I've written before that photography is art.

I believe editing is part of that art.

The camera records the information that was in front of me.

The editing process gives me the opportunity to show you how I experienced it.

Learning how to do that has taken countless nights.

There have been nights when everyone else in the house was asleep and I was still sitting at the computer.

Zoom in.

Zoom out.

Compare.

Reject.

Go back.

Try another mask.

Undo it.

Start again.

Walk away for ten minutes because I've been staring at the same photograph for so long that I can't even tell whether it looks good anymore.

Then come back.

Look at it with fresh eyes.

Make one tiny adjustment.

And finally think...

There it is.

That's the photograph.

And then there are the photographs that fight me every step of the way.

The ones where I know there's something there, but I can't quite bring it out.

Sometimes I'll spend twenty minutes on one image.

Sometimes an hour.

Sometimes I give up completely.

Then I'll come back weeks later with something new I've learned, open the same photograph, and suddenly see exactly what it needed.

I love that.

Because one of the most interesting parts of this journey has been going back and looking at my older work.

I can see the progression.

Not only in the photographs I'm taking, but in the way I'm editing them.

I'll open something I edited months ago and immediately notice something I would change today.

There was a time when that bothered me.

Now it makes me happy.

Because seeing what I would do differently means I've learned something since then.

Growth has a funny way of making your old work uncomfortable.

But that's okay.

That photograph represents the photographer I was at that moment.

The photograph I'm editing tonight represents the photographer I am now.

And hopefully, six months from now, I'll look back at what I'm doing today and see something else I could have done better.

I want that.

Because I'm still learning.

I'm still growing.

I'm becoming a stronger photographer.

And I don't want that process to stop.

Then something happened that gave me an opportunity to actually look back at how far I'd come.

I entered my photographs into the fair.

Before anyone else ever saw them hanging there, I had already spent countless hours deciding which photographs I wanted to submit.

Choosing.

Editing.

Looking at them again.

Second guessing myself.

Changing something.

Changing it back.

Wondering if I had picked the right photograph at all.

Eventually, there comes a point when you can't make another adjustment.

You have to let the photograph go.

That's harder than it sounds when you've spent that much time with an image.

At some point, it isn't yours to judge anymore.

Other people get to see it.

And this time...

they got to vote.

When I found out that one of my photographs had won the People's Choice Award, I got emotional.

Because this wasn't just one judge making a decision.

These were the people who attended the fair.

They walked through.

They looked at the photographs.

They stopped in front of mine.

And enough of them chose it as their favorite.

There's something incredibly humbling about that.

Because those people didn't know about all the hours behind that photograph.

They didn't see me sitting in Lightroom late at night.

They didn't see all the frames I rejected.

They didn't see the mistakes.

The tutorials.

The questions.

The critiques.

The photographs I ruined.

The photographs I almost deleted.

The edits I completely started over.

They didn't see how many times I've looked at my own work and wondered whether I was actually getting any better.

They just saw the photograph.

And they chose it.

Being voted the People's Choice, knowing that the people attending the fair looked at all of that work and decided that mine was the photograph they connected with most, is an honor that is difficult for me to put into words.

The award doesn't mean I've reached some finish line.

It means I'm learning.

I'm growing.

I'm becoming a stronger photographer than I was when I started.

There is still so much I want to understand.

So many techniques I want to improve.

So many mistakes I haven't even made yet.

So many photographs I haven't taken.

And honestly, that's part of what keeps me excited about photography.

Every time I learn something new, I realize there is something else waiting just beyond it.

But that award gave me a rare opportunity to stop looking forward for a moment...

and look backward.

Not just at the winning photograph.

At the journey.

From sitting in front of Lightroom barely understanding what the sliders did...

to creating something that people at the fair stopped to look at, connected with, and ultimately chose as their favorite.

That's when I realized how much I've changed.

Not into a photographer who knows everything.

Into a photographer who knows more than he did yesterday.

A photographer who is becoming more patient.

More observant.

More intentional.

More confident in his own vision.

That's a distance I sometimes forget I've traveled.

I think we all do that.

We're so focused on where we're trying to go that we forget to turn around and see how far we've already come.

Progress doesn't usually announce itself.

There isn't always a moment where someone tells you:

"You're better now."

Most of the time, it happens quietly.

One photograph at a time.

One edit at a time.

One mistake at a time.

One late night at a time.

Until one day you look at something you've created and realize...

I couldn't have made this a year ago.

Maybe that's what the People's Choice Award means to me more than anything.

It's not a finish line.

It's a marker along the road.

A reminder.

A reminder that those late nights mattered.

The bad edits mattered.

The photographs that never got posted mattered.

The missed focus mattered.

The criticism mattered.

The times I asked someone what I could do better mattered.

The nights when I told myself...

"Just one more photo."

...and somehow ended up editing twenty more.

They all mattered.

Because all of those little moments added up.

I'll probably still be sitting in front of Lightroom later than I should tonight.

I'll still second guess myself.

I'll still compare two photographs that everyone else would swear are exactly the same.

I'll still make mistakes.

I'll still edit something, look at it the next morning, and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

And months from now, I'll probably look back at a photograph I'm incredibly proud of today and immediately notice something I could have done differently.

I hope I do.

Because that will mean I'm still learning.

Still changing.

Still becoming a stronger photographer.

The People's Choice Award is something I will always be proud of.

Knowing that people chose my photograph out of all the photographs they could have chosen means more to me than they probably realize.

But I think what I'm most proud of is everything that happened before anyone ever cast that vote.

The countless nights.

The mistakes.

The questions.

The patience.

The frustration.

The learning.

The progression.

The hours no one sees.

Because long before anyone at the fair decided that photograph was worth voting for...

I had to learn to believe it was worth showing them.