As a surf photographer, one of the most common questions I get is “Did you enhance that photo?” This always makes me chuckle because, of course I did. Why, you may ask? Well…

I shoot in camera RAW. That means my images are unformatted, ie: no white balance, no color correction, no cropping, etc. But it also gives me the most information to work with on each image. A RAW image looks rather bleak. Here’s the RAW from the image above:

The image is sharp, but a bit dark. This is because I shot it at a very high shutter speed to freeze the action. High speed = less light. But no problem, we fix this in Lightroom. With proper color correction, and a little cropping, the image pops.

Here are a few more RAW vs. finished images:

Ahhhh, are you starting to see now? Nothing is the way my camera shoots it, yet everything is. One just has to dig a little deeper into the information captured in the image. Here’s another:

I suppose the better question for me is “how do you see this image?” That, my friend, is a much more involved answer and one that comes from years of experience. If I look through my lens and see only the RAW image, I would be uninspired. However, I often see the potential of a photograph that rests somewhere in the recesses of my brain. A spot of light on a dark background, spray illuminated in the highlights, feet, head, hands in the right position, the critical moment of a maneuver, and the amount of mist or clarity in the scene all register before I even push the shutter.

They say doing something 10,000 times helps to perfect the action. Well, I have done that probably 1,000,000 times and I’m still learning, but every time I do it with a bit more vision of the ultimate outcome. So yes folks, I do “enhance” every image you see me post as do all of your favorite photogs!