No you can't see the picture now

In culinary terms  there is a trend called the slow food movement  One of the key tenets of this movement is that we have all gotten so use to have everything instantly that  didn't realize we have lost in our rush to have food instantly at our disposal. This has led to not only a decline in our healthiness because of our "gotta have it now" sensibility . Our palettes have become childlike in that there needs
is no time develop a taste for a thing.

My feeling about pictures is right along this path.  We need to step back and ask do we need to see the picture the instant after it was taken. what are we looking for. It wasn't too long ago when we had to send the film canister away for awhile to get it developed. a process that could take a week.  We consume our pictures on Facebook and instagram to a hungry audience ravenous for something new to excite us. But most of those pictures we only look at in a flickering pass as we move to there is nothing I can say or do that will change this reality.  What we can do is change our output. But why ... why not just pop out the picture from your camera and or smartphone and share it. It breaks down to two key reasons. One I will briefly restate what I talked about in an earlier post. Raw vs JPG The second reason is about developing a story with your pictures.

In brief all cameras collect a image into a RAW format and  then either output the raw format directly or change it into a readable format called JPG.  The thing is  the amount of compression (making the size smaller ) is a rate you can't control. This means while your initial photo may be 16 Meg in size when it is outputted its often less than 4. Where does all those extra megs go. its tossed. That means the gradual changes in the clouds become more abrupt. the subtle shapes in the dark are just rendered as black. the big difference  is with the editing of  programs like lightroom  or Photoshop is  you can control how much you want to allow this to happen.  Color saturation and contrast are all determined in this mix. It makes a huge difference  in things like sunsets or delicate features on someone's face.  The computer does not know when to do what so it does it all the same. which is like only having a microwave for an oven.  its really good for somethings  but limiting when you want to do more than the basics. In addition to this there are details that unrecoverable in the JPG format that while captured may at first be impossible to see. These can be honed and presented.


 My second reason is that a couple things happen when you get away from the event. You start to look at the same pictures quite differently, some will seem redundant, Some will ring false, others you may fall deeply in love with. You have to get away for the moment sometimes to see where the magic really lives rather than just feel good in the moments. The  idea of crafting a story telling series of shots has an appeal that works well. However its impact is lost if everything is out there. That means your gonna have to hold  it for a bit so that your audience can see it as a part of a greater whole.

 As with most things. the choice to not give you the photo now is not arbitrary  rather deliberate because I don't want it to be just a passing fancy, I desire a mosaic of images to build greater creative walls of discovery because if it took me some time to compose, then select , and edit and place in context I want to image to hold you like the vision when I first noticed it. Like a a fine well crafted meal whose scent draws you over and then the sight of it stirs things deep in you. And if you have ever had a meal like that you find the wait part of the fun and it builds your appreciation I think that is worth waiting for.