Trusting Myself
Learned a few lessons over the past few months and some lessons I relearned. As humans we seem to be in a constant state of learning. Learning about ourselves, a job, other people and even those we care about around us. My learning of late consisted of a little of both, I suppose.
As a photographer and specifically a sports photographer, I am constantly trying to learn to improve my craft. Shooting sports takes a lot of really great gear and, of course, that great gear is very expensive. I have saved and scrimped for years just to obtain the medium- or middle-of-the-pack gear I have, just barely adequate for shooting sports. I go into this just to explain my need to always be improving and learning new techniques, not to solicit funds for better gear. I am constantly reading books, magazines and articles on photography.
During some recent studying - I say recent - but I have been looking into and studying a new technique for almost a year before deciding to even try to use this technique. It is shooting in the JPEG image file format instead of the RAW format - a major red flag for me, as I learned early on that RAW is the only way to shoot.
The best way to explain it in writing would be: JPEG is like receiving the Reader’s Digest or Cliff ’s Notes of a book. Sure, it will get you by and looks fine until you dive into the details. RAW is like the 1,000-page novel or entire Encyclopedia Britannica [some younger readers may need to Google that one].
JPEG stores info that would fit on a fingernail and RAW is enough info to fill about five people, size-wise. I think you may get the point. This is the reason all professional photographers shoot in RAW 99 percent of the time; it allows us to have complete control over a photo and always great control over correcting errors.
So back to my recent study and journey into shooting sports in JPEG: the first time out went fairly smoothly and the lighting was not too bad, so I thought, ‘You know what? This might have been a great idea.’
The next time, shooting a game in a gym with poor lighting, I paid the price for shooting in JPEG. The images were not sharp and they were very dark which was impossible to correct without having shot in RAW. What a nightmare!
My only recourse was to delete the entire game’s worth of photos or release the album as mediocre. I released the album; a photographer is only as good as his reputation and I have strived to never release poor images so it saddened me somewhat but it also taught me something as well - to rely and trust my own judgment. I am a skilled photographer and should have trusted my instincts and years of experience. We need to trust ourselves, trust our own instincts and experiences. Opinions and advice can be helpful at times but always trust yourself first. This is Will B saying, “To thine own self be true.” - William Shakespeare