Mt Hood ChillMt Hood on a very cold January morning.

Many people today look at a beautiful photo, and quickly dismiss it as having been "Photoshopped".  The disdain is understandable; some photographers have used Photoshop to add elements to a photograph that were not there during capture, and have lost trust as a result.

I do use Photoshop to edit photographs, but not with the intent to cheat.  I shoot in Raw format. What that means is that the image that comes from the camera has not been processed in any way. If your phone or camera returns .jpeg images to you, those images have been processed by your device. Colors have likely been more saturated, edges sharpened, and various filters applied. The device makes many decisions for you, and that's great. The proliferation of photographic devices is a great thing, and most of us don't need or want to delve into editing photos.

I do want to. It's what I love to do. I am thrilled to come home after a shoot, download the Raw files, and decide which to work on. Using software, I can make very specific choices that will affect the final result. Different images require different decisions. You can see that the photos on my site do not all look the same, nor would it make sense for them to. Some require significant color saturation to achieve the look I want. Others require less, or none at all for monochrome images. However I decide to edit the photo, the point is that it's a decision. A choice. And I like having that control. 

I never add elements to my photographs that were not there during capture. I will remove items if they are a distraction, or imperfections in the image from dust on my sensor. I will alter tones in my images to achieve a particular look. I am not always trying to make the image look exactly like it did in reality; rather, I'm using what was there as a starting point to create a beautiful image. The software gives me significant artistic freedom, and as a photographer, I am thrilled to have these tools at my disposal.