It is easy to generalize my comments about "professional" photographers, "hobbyists" and "snap shot takers". I'll do my best not to speak in those generalizations. The best way to do that is to speak about myself and my art, my intentions, my passions. Let's see how that goes...

Having a digital camera has been a great addition to my bag. It allows me to make near instantaneous changes to how I capture an image. No longer do I take shots of a sunset, take the film to the lab, wait for the transparencies to return, then critique my images and hope the next sunset is as memorable as the previous. I am able to make on the fly adjustments and make the most of each photo opportunity.

What this does not mean is I take a stab in the dark with my settings and adjust from there. My years of experience and training allow me to capture the image I have preconceived. Hours, more hours I can count, have been spent learning to pre-visualize the final image I am after. With digital I am able to capture the light (after all in a nutshell that's all photography is, capturing light) as I perceive it to be, then fine tune the nuances.

With film you have the basic settings, film speed, aperture and shutter speed. Digital, although allowing more people to enter the field of photography, actually has many more "settings" to fine tune. Now you have something called White Balance and no longer do you select the film speed for each role, you can adjust it on each image.

Once you have captured the image you now need to process it. The lab used to take care of this for the photographers, now it falls on the shoulders of the photographer. At the bare minimum this requires Sharpening the image. A term foreign to film shooters. And at greater lengths it requires color balancing and cross processing.

All this, and the bar has been raised because accessing great images has never been easier. The internet can connect you instantly with the work of masters like Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, and Galen Rowell.

There is a lot involved in the final image of a photographer. All this as an introduction to a couple before and after shots. I have posted each image as it came straight form the camera, and along with it, the final image as I had pre-visualized it prior to depressing the shutter release. Enjoy! ~Matt