wasting bandwidth since 1999
Continuing to rant on the topic of AI, I’ve actually been using artificially intelligent software regularly for more than a year. Sorta.
I’ve been playing with two photo editing packages that claim to be “powered”, in part, by artificial intelligence. For one of them, you know it must be true because they mention AI every third paragraph on the website.
In his column this week, Jay Mathews begins with a premise I can agree with. I know. I was also surprised.
His concept is that schools don’t make writing a priority and that students don’t engage in writing nearly enough.
So far, so good. But then he heads off into well-worn territory, making the case largely about himself.
The video embedded above may not appeal to everyone but it could be interesting for anyone who takes a lot of photographs. It’s a short (6-1/2 minutes) testimony to the relationship between National Geographic photographers and their editors, and offers some insight into the editing process at a professional level.
I’ve had a number of opportunities in recent years to participate in workshops and other sessions led by professional photographers, including some from Nat Geo. The editing process is one important topic that always comes up and, it turns out, the photographer does very little of that editing by themselves. That’s why they have editors.
However, those professionals use the term “editing” very differently than most regular picture takers.1 For them, editing photos is about cropping the image, maybe applying a filter or two, changing the brightness. Or just clicking the Auto button to see if the software can improve things. Professionals refer to those changes as “processing” the images.
For professional photographers and their editors, editing is the process of reviewing a relatively huge number of photos and selecting the relatively few that will be used in a project. At Nat Geo that can mean taking 40,000 images (or more) and finding fifteen or so that will best enhance the story.
I can’t imagine that job. It’s hard enough when I come back from a trip with 800 photos and have to pare them down to a collection that my friends and family will actually want to view. Part of my editing also involves writing a title (instead of IMG-1171), a short description, and adding a few keywords for each image I post online to Flickr and/or my SmugMug sites.
I also love viewing photos taken by others but I really wish more of them would do a better job of editing of their pictures. Too many people simply post almost everything they take to their social media channels with little or no culling of the lesser images. As a result, the narrative in those pictures can get lost.
Spend some extra time on editing those photos and they will tell a better story. Thank you.
1. I mean absolutely nothing negative in that phrase. I’m also a “regular picture taker” who is working to improve my skills and I love helping others do the same.
© 2023 Assorted Stuff
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑