Rarely a day goes by on social media where I don’t see a post about the power of editing in photography showing some straight out of the camera vs edited photos.
Listen, I understand that photographers feel the need to show more of their value by saying “Look what I can do that you can’t! I edit my photos!”
The problem is that most of these before and after shots showing the “power of editing” there is barely any difference in the photos. The pictures mostly look like they have some color grading applied or maybe had a filter slapped on them.
You aren’t setting yourself apart by showing that you put in a minimal amount of effort!!
Furthermore, some of the photos I’ve seen displayed were definitely not ‘saved’ by editing them. Sometimes you have to know when to throw in the towel on a bad photo.
There’s also the school of thought that photographers have now become content creators on social media in order to get their work in front of people. Showing the difference between unedited and edited photos is an easy way to create content.
But it can easily backfire on you. To the untrained eye, when you haven’t done anything drastic to the photo, it can look like you just applied a filter to the picture.
This isn’t elevating your work in the eye of a potential client. It brings you down to their level.
So, feel free to continue using this content creation method, but use it with caution. It’s very easy to overuse this technique instead of picking and choosing the most impactful instances where it makes a difference.
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