The Fall of a Purist

I think Maggie may have converted me.

Maggie is a friend of mine from Wildwood, which is code for "the most awesome summer of my life, in which I was crammed 10+ people to an apartment with 60 of the greatest people ever." She has a blog (linked above) in which she often posts photos she's taken. Now, I consider myself a pretty good photographer -- I've had my share of accolades since I began shooting two years ago -- but Maggie consistently stuns me with her work. All five of you who read my blog should definitely check hers out. You won't be disappointed.

The thing is, I've always considered myself somewhat hard-core when it came to photography. I collected antique cameras for like 15 years before I actually picked up anything but a point-and-shoot, and I rarely used those when I had them. When I actually got into photography, I went straight for a Digital Rebel and got to work taking shots on full manual. I'm a UNIX hacker, and I take the same approach to my photos: I shoot raw, adjust the exposure if I have to, and that's it. I was going to get a larger CF card so I could do bracketing without losing space. (I suppose that's a kind of digital processing, too, but at least it's in-camera). Though I never look down on anyone who did a lot of processing, I have taken a certain pride in my purist attitude. Ansel Adams didn't have a computer to do post-processing, I would sometimes think, my nose held slightly aloft.

That was until this morning.

Thing is, without at least minimal post-processing, I can't take pictures like these (particularly the ones at the end). They're just pictures Maggie took out on a fall afternoon, but the tone that the added contrast provided is something I realized I just can't ever duplicate in my own work, but I want to. While I can't imagine being one of those photographers who always modifies his photos, I've seen some awesome stuff with minimal processing done in the last few years -- most of which simply couldn't have been achieved with a camera alone -- and Maggie's pictures were the straw that broke the camel's back. My nose is now pointed straight ahead, and when I get my photos collected into one place, there will probably be a "post-processed" section.

Yeah, I probably won't put them in the same category. Might be too much of a leap for me still.