While currently working on a website update we needed to get some professional photos of our products. The company doing the upgrade had in house photographers that could do the work. My assumption was that the pictures would turn out really good. What was given to us were some that were great but most were only average. With the contrast set too high making some of our snack products look too artificial. Not very appetizing.
This led me to learn what might have happened. There is a difference between “Raw photos” and “JPeg photos”. How one can be better manipulated post picture taking to bring out the colors digitally through programs such as Photoshop.
Having spent money already on the shoot, some products need to be retaken. Having grown up loving photography and having my own darkroom as a teenager to develop pictures, now I decided to look at getting a good camera and doing it myself.
But now there is a new world of detail to consider. Cameras have different types of sensors. Cmos vs full frame. Cmos has smaller sensors for lighter weight cameras. While their pictures are good, full frame gives you more control over the photo shoot. Better detail can be had but the cameras are much more expensive. Then there is the issue of image stabilization, color correction automatically done on the camera, lens mount constraints, lens quality, battery life and so on.
All of this without even considering the learning curve I would need to climb to learn a photo editing program such as Photoshop. Thinking about the hours I would have to spend on YouTube learning the power of a program like this to turn my rough pictures into gems.
What I learned in all this are these timeless lessons that continually repeat themselves:
No topic is simple. Yet our nature guides us to render opinions with only a quick overview of a situation. Fooling ourselves that everything is easy.
No meaningful outcome can simply be done. There are always multiple steps and many challenges to be worked through. All good things of value require both time and effort.
The key to life is to never get discouraged by what lies ahead of us. It’s always harder than it looks until we decide to try. And if you have the will to succeed.