First Presbyterian - 16

First Presbyterian Church in Independence, Kan. View On Black

It seems that I wasn't being quite fair to iPhoto the other day.

I took a crappy shot and couldn't make it what I wanted with iPhoto, but I could make it "better" with Photoshop.

The other part of Mr. Weese's article talks about exposing the photograph properly to begin with, then using the image editor on the computer to fine tune the image into what you want it. With film you exposed for the shadows and developed for the highlights. With digital it's the other way around, expose for the highlights and "develop" for the shadows.

And while I've known that basic fact of digital photography, I've never really used it. As a newspaper photographer I strove to get my photos the way I wanted them as much as possible in camera. I did not like sitting in front of the computers, futzing around with the picture.

Now that I'm taking my photography in a more artistic direction I find it behooves me to invest the time in developing my photos in order to make better images.

The Monkey Island photo is a great example of how I used to take pictures. I exposed for the castle/habitat structure, which made the sky go almost completely white. iPhoto couldn't fix it, Photoshop kind of could.

But the image of the church above I exposed "correctly." I spot metered from the sky setting it to just beneath the point where it would wash out. And then I used software to bring out the tones in the building.

The surprising part to me was that iPhoto did an excellent job with this image. I couldn't do any better with Photoshop. So it appears that iPhoto is a perfectly capable program if you hand it a well-exposed image.