7 reasons why you should post-process your photographs

Post-processing is the final step between when an image is envisioned and till it comes alive. Pro photographers and serious hobbyists alike run their photos through this stage before sharing the final outcome. Why? because even the most skilled photographers cannot overcome the limitations of the camera sensors such as large differences in exposures levels between skies and landscapes or lighting a subject that is backlit. Moreover, If everything seems to be perfect about your photo on first look, a closer look may reveal imperfections. Issues such as noise, purple fringing, crooked horizon line, distortion and vignetting are commonplace and need to be ironed out before revealing the final result.

Further, every image should be subtly post-processed so that you can apply the effects that truly brings out your vision. In this article I shall be looking at some simpler aspects that usually ruin an otherwise good photo and how to correct those issues in post-processing.

1.     Crooked images


Crooked images are not that easy to spot, at least not to the untrained eyes. The horizon line however is a good indication whether your images are crooked. However, what if your images don’t have an easy way to spot the horizon line? What if the composition is of a flower or a portrait or even a plate of food? Look for anything in your image that can be used as a straight line and then orient the image using it as a guide. In Lightroom it is easy to do.

2.     Convert an image to black & white


Two habits I’ve trained myself to adopt when I’m about to snap photos is to set my camera to shoot in RAW and my picture profile to neutral. The neutral mode allows me the greatest flexibility to work with color tone, contrast, sharpness and other refinements while post-processing instead of letting the camera’s processor make the call on my behalf. Another reason I use these settings is so that I can post-process in black & white whenever required. Even if I don’t eventually give the image a black & white treatment, it is always a good reference point to see if my image has what I refer to as ‘compositional value’ and can hold its own without colors. Believe it or not colors can sometimes suppress a poor composition. Great photographers often shoot and process in black & white to emphasize on composition and subject.

3.     Spots on your image


Spots in your images can happen because of a number of reasons. Primary among them are dust on the sensor and dirt on you lenses. Dust particles on your sensor can be easily removed if you use the self-cleaning feature of your camera. Make sure the camera is fully charged when you do this. The mirror flips away and the camera gently shakes the sensor to clean it. Attempting to manually clean the sensor is only advisable if you are absolutely sure what you are doing. It takes extremely agile fingers. Lenses can be easily cleaned with micro-fiber cloth and special lens cleaning fluids. If you forgot cleaning your camera sensor and now stuck with spots in your images, don’t worry. Photoshop and Lightroom has spot removal tools that can take care of almost anything.

4.     Chromatic aberrations


Also known as purple fringing, and usually appearing on the edge of your subjects. It’s noticeable when you zoom in to your photo or when you print. These chromatic aberrations happen when the different wave lengths of light are not perfectly focused on the same image plane. This is a lens issue. Cheaper lenses tend to suffer relatively more from chromatic aberrations. There are some ways to counter this in camera but the easiest method is to do so in Adobe Lightroom. Simply check ‘Remove Chromatic Aberrations’ and you are good to go.

5.     Barrel Distortion


Wide angle lenses tend to suffer more from this type of distortion due to their inherent built characteristics.  Telephoto lenses suffer from what is known as pincushion distortion, which is the opposite effect of wide angle and lines tend to be distorted toward the inside of an image. Barrel Distortion is named as such to signify the effect that this distortion has on images (as is evident from the above image). The simplest way to correct this with one simple click on ‘Enable Profile Correction’ in Lightroom.

6.     Remove elements from your image


How many times you have taken a beautiful image and only later to find out at the corner there is an element that sticks out like a sore thumb? A beautiful landscape image with a telephone post at a corner, a lovely fireworks image that caught the camera flash by another photographer, or a breathtaking waterfall with an ugly looking signboard peeking from the corner? Don’t worry, Photoshop has some of the best tools in the business to take care of all these? The best thing is all these tools are now available in content-aware mode and can be automatically removed.

7.     Final Word of Advice

Once you have finished editing your image (or a batch of images), step back and review it in full-screen mode. Turning off the room lights and leaning back is a good idea. Without the mouse and keyboard in your reach, think about the image critically. Sometimes even walk away and let the image lie there for some time before returning for a fresh approach.


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Prime lenses vs zoom lenses: All you need to know

All lenses can be broadly sub-divided into two major categories – primes and zooms. Prime lenses are those which have a single focal length (focal range refers to the zooming range). You will find these lenses marked with the acronym 50mm or 85mm or even 200mm. Zooms on the other hand have a variable focal length. You can switch between its focal length ranges by turning the zoom ring. Such lenses would be marked as such 18-55mm, 70-300mm or 18-200mm. For obvious reasons prime lenses don’t have a zoom ring on them.


1. Advantage of prime lenses: Quality of image

You will hear a lot of good things about the image quality of prime lenses. Prime lenses tend to have less moving parts inside and less complicated mechanism resulting in a higher quality of images. There is no zoom ring, which means there is no zooming ring. Manufacturers can thus focus their energy in making the quality of the images tack sharp. 

You are likely to notice a significant drop in quality for wide angle zoom lenses at the widest focal length. Wide angle lenses suffer from what is known as barrel distortion. Images are skewed towards the corners and the center appears bloated. Vertical lines appear curved. Wide zooms suffer from this problem more than wide primes.

Longer focal length lenses, on the other hand, suffer from pincushion distortion. Here again zooms suffer more compared to primes. As a matter of fact prime telephoto lenses such as 135mm f/2 D made by Nikon or the 400mm primes made by both Nikon and Canon are widely acclaimed to be the best in the business.


Weight and bulk


Since prime lenses do not have a lot of moving parts inside, their overall bulk and weight tend to be less than zooms. There are, however, some exceptions. Some fixed focal length lenses like the Nikon 135mm f/2 D mentioned above tend to be heavier than the comparable zoom lenses. Just to make my point here, the prime lens mentioned above weighs around 800 grams and the comparable Nikkor 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED zoom lens weighs only 490 grams. And this is primarily due to the lens construction. Aimed at professional photographers thus includes metal in its construction to resist heavy usage unlike the plastic material that characterizes the entry level lenses.

Faster maximum aperture

Primes have a faster maximum aperture (e.g. f1.4, f2.8, f4…) compared to zoom lenses of the same focal length range. Let’s say we compare an 18-55mm kit lens with a 50mm prime. The kit lens has a maximum aperture range of f/3.5 – 5.6. The prime, on the other hand, depending on the brand and the version, will have at least f/1.8 maximum aperture. In low light situations that extra stop or two of light can be extremely handy. Zoom lenses like the one I mentioned above would only open up to its widest aperture (f3.5 in this case) when at its shortest focal length. When you zoom in, maximum aperture drops down to f/5.6.

Cheaper price

Prime lenses can be cheaper than zoom lenses. This is a significant advantage for amateur photographers. Especially when you consider that the image quality of these lens are top notch too.

Disadvantages of prime lenses

With Prime lenses the most obvious disadvantage is the lack of zooming ability. If you need to zoom you will have to do that using your feet. Plus, for a single focal length range you will need to buy at least two prime lenses. You will also have to change lenses quite a lot when shooting.

Advantages of zoom lenses: Convenience 


As you would come to expect, many of the disadvantages of prime lenses becomes advantages for zooms. Let’s first start with the convenience factor. The fact that a single zoom lens can often cover the focal length for two or even three primes, it gives you an incredible advantage when shooting. For travel photography when you are on vacation, you can carry a single lens to cover everything you need. This means you can stay within the international carry-on baggage limit and still packing your favorite photography gear. And you still have room for your other indulgences.

Disadvantages of zoom lenses

Weight is a factor that works against zoom lenses. But not always as has been described above already. Image quality is another factor. Then again there are plenty of good quality zoom less which produce excellent images. The Canon 200-400mm lens is one of the best in its class and is frequently used by bird, wildlife and sports photographers.

Over all the debate prime vs zooms is more dependent on personal preference, budget and style of shooting. What one photographer prefers may not be the natural choice for another.



Additional Readings

Why wide angle lenses, are they better suited for landscape photography?

Wide angle lenses, have often been referred to as the landscape photographer’s lens. There are a number of reasons for that compliment. Landscape photography requires that your lens offers a wide angle of view. It also requires greater depth of field (DOF) and a sharper image quality. All of these are native to wide angle lenses. But the usability of the very popular wide angle lens goes much beyond landscape photography. In this article we shall discuss the many uses of such a lens, including shooting landscape photos. But first what is a wide angle lens?

Wide angle lenses: A definition


Technically, any lens that has a focal length (zoom vs prime) of less than 50mm is considered a wide angle. A 50mm lens is widely considered to be a standard lens because it gives the same perspective as the human eye. There is some debate in this. Some photographers say it is 40mm, others put the 42mm as the standard view. Anyways, serious wide angle starts at 35mm and wider. Anything around or under 16mm falls in the ultra wide-angle category.

Wide Angle lenses: primes vs zooms

I have already discussed in detail about prime and zoom lenses in another article (zoom vs prime). Prime lenses are designed with focus on optical performance. Zoom lenses are more convenient because they allow you to switch focal length and therefore angle of view, just by a turn of the zoom ring. This comes useful when you’re in a situation with limited space to physically move. However, these lenses can sometime cut corners on optical performance slightly lowering its quality compared to primes. Having said that there are a number of notable exceptions. The optically superior 24-70mm f2.8 (made by all lens manufacturers) is a case in point.

Wide angle lenses are available in both prime and zoom varieties. They both have their pros and cons. You can read more about prime vs zoom lenses here. Personally, when it comes to wide angle lenses, I prefer the zoom variety. This is of course when I am not shooting with the 35mm prime. The 35mm prime is a journalist’s choice – sharp, lightning quick, lightweight and cheap. Everything that I expect from a wide angle.

At the end of the day there is no one lens that will suit all photographers or for that matter all situations. The wide angle lens that you end up shooting with will depend on what you are shooting, your pocket and of course your vision.


Wide angle lenses: best uses


1.     Include foreground interest

The biggest mistake that a landscape or architecture photographer does when shooting with a wide angle lens is they forget to put something in the foreground. Placing something in the foreground is not only for complying with the rule of thirds, but also to provide a sense of scale in the photo. Wide angles tend to make distant objects from your lens appear smaller than they really are.


Let’s say you are shooting Machu Pichu in Peru from the opposite mountain. The picture is grand, however, with absolutely nothing to refer to in the picture the viewer has no way to sense the scale of the place. Placing a person in your immediate foreground, say turned away from the camera and shooting over his shoulder can immediately give perspective and scale to the image.

2.     Get close! Get close! Get closer!

You will hear photographers who shoot with wide angle lenses advice this to you all the time. Get close. But why? This is because wide angle lenses tend to push everything back. That’s the nature of these lenses. Unless you step in close your subject will become a tiny spec in the vast emptiness.

The other advantage of getting close is so that you get to fill the frame with the subject you are photographing. Filling the frame is a much better way of composing your shots rather then leaving vast open spaces. 


Say, you are photographing the Blue Mosque with a 14-24mm ultra-wide angle lens. Even though the mosque is pretty big, you will find empty spaces around it when looking through the viewfinder. You have to get very close to the actual building to be able to fill the frame.

3.     Follow the fundamental composition guidelines


Certain golden rules of photography like leading lines, rule of thirds, point of interest, lines and diagonals, patterns etc. work super great when working with wide angle lenses. Landscape photographer prefer working from a low angle, keeping a subject in the foreground and a point of interest as already been discussed above.

4.     Specific uses of wide angle lenses

Wide angle lenses most often are used by photojournalists and street photographers. This is of course apart from landscape and architecture photographers. A very popular lens with the first two genres is the 35mm prime. Quite often it is pitted against the 50mm, which is yet another wonderful lens to shoot with (though not a wide angle lens technically). Landscape photographers prefer the slightly wider perspective such as the above mentioned 14-24mm lens. This lens is very sharp. Wide angle lenses create better depth of field when compared to tele lenses. Architecture photographers also prefer the wide angle lenses because it allows them to include a close-up element in the foreground making it more visually balanced.

So which wide angle lens are you using? And why? Share your thoughts!



Additional Readings

5 ways to improve your photographic vision

These days, with everybody wielding expensive professional photography gear it is easy to think that in order to make better images you’ve got to have better gear. If you think this way you would be far from the truth. For as long as photographers have been shooting, the eye for a great shot, the understanding of finer details as to what makes a shot stand out from the average ones has remained the benchmark of good photography. Better gear comes a long way after. You can replace expensive gear with cheap cameras and still manage to get good images. But if you don’t have photographic vision, you will never make great images; regardless of the gear you own.

So, how can one create better images? In other words how does one acquire the power to envision an image? Here are five tips that should help you – 

1.     Pick one lens and make it an extension of your eye


This is easier said than done and takes a considerable amount of practice. When you hear a professional photographer speak about developing your vision, what s/he invariably suggests is to know how to make unique images of a scene using your tools, until that becomes your signature style. Great photographers such as Ansel Adams, Josef Koudelka, Robert Capa and Fan Ho all have their own signature styles. A significant part of that style is attributed to using a single lens and seeing the world as it unfurls through it. When used over a period of time, like the memorable combination of a Leica 35mm and 50mm prime used by Henri Cartier-Bresson, the lens becomes an extension of your eyes.

2.     Use the element of negative space in your image


Look at the above image. The partially open window is placed towards one corner while the rest of the image is dominated by an empty space. This empty space is known as negative space. Invariably when you look at the image your eyes tend to roam around the vast emptiness and then come back to be fixated on the window. You may even start to look for details, the three potted plants, and the crochet work on the white curtains. This a clever way to focus attention of the viewer to the important aspect of an image which the photographer wants to highlight. Negative space simply helps him to achieve that more easily.

3.     Shoot or post-process in black & white


Some compositions are best expressed in monochrome. Devoid of colors an image lacks the elements that sometimes be distracting. You can shoot in color and then post-process in black and white which gives you a greater tonal range. Black and white compositions have often been found to be more powerful than color. Back in the early days of photography when film was the dominant format for shooting, everybody had to shoot in black and white. Color film came much later. Photographers in those days relied heavily on compositional aspects to convey depth and dimension. Sadly, these days, the brilliance of colors often hide poor compositions.

4.     Incorporate repeating patterns in your image


Repeating patterns and or shapes help you create a sort of order in an image. The human brain can perceive repeating patterns and shapes as something that makes sense. That is why repeating patterns in music create rhythm; and rhythm is harmony. In photography, when that same harmony is broken it becomes a point of interest in an image. 

5.     Incorporate lines in your images


Lines, be it straight, crooked or curved has an effect on your images. I have already discussed the importance of using leading lines in a previous article on this website. Leading lines tend to draw the attention of the viewer towards the main point of interest in an image. Diagonal lines, especially those which travel from the bottom left of the image to the top right add an interesting dynamics to an image. I had discussed perfectly straight horizon lines in an earlier image. Such perfectly straight horizon lines can induce a sense of tranquility to an image. Lines which seem to be falling over adds a bit of tension in a composition. E.g.; a tall building shot with a slight tilt induces tension in the image. Curved lines on the other hand are frequently used as leading lines in composition.

The above tips are just a few ways to improve your photographic vision. Photography, however, is more about the practice than theory. What you learn on the internet or at a workshop has to be put into use to refine and then to adapt. Your style evolves over time as you shoot more and learn to make better images.



Additional Reading

How to improve your travel photos by including people

While photography is being more and more accessible to everyone it has never been so important to take unique photos with an unusual perspective. With everyone shooting from a similar ‘view point’ everyone’s image is going to look alike. Hence, it becomes imperative to scout for rare locations to create unique images. In the 21st century, as a photographer, the biggest challenge is no longer how to make an image but how to stand out from the crowd by making distinctive images.

Vacations happen to be a time when the long lost camera all of a sudden becomes our best companion. They are cleaned, charged and primed for action. But more than half of the images shot on a vacation turn out disappointing. Poor composition is the primary reason. But it can also be bad lighting and incorrect exposure settings. The following tips will help you to realize some of your composition mistakes even before you make them and that way help you make better travel photos.

Include people to express scale


Scale means when you have something in the photo that gives you a comparative reference of how big or small the scene / subject is. Let’s say you are photographing a beautiful landscape. It’s beautiful as it is and everything is perfect but without a point of reference the viewer has absolutely no idea how big the place is. What you need to do is allow someone to walk into the shot, just so that you can use that person as a point of reference. As a matter of fact, that individual will also become what is known in photography as the focal point or point of interest. The sweeping landscape and everything around that person simply converts into negative space. The viewer’s eye will invariably wander around and then get fixated onto the individual.

Images are just clicks if they don’t tell a story


If you hear a National Geographic photo editor describe what makes a great photo worth publishing on their magazine, you would invariably hear him/her say that the picture must tell a story. Random captures often don’t have the value and depth in them which can capture the imagination of the viewer for long. Only when you go above and beyond and is prepared to go the extra mile in order to capture an unfolding moment will you ever achieve that in your photos. Sometimes the difference between a god photo and a great photo is simply is simply to include people.

Catch them in the act


One way of capturing people, and this is only for those who would love to go the extra mile to capture a sense of the place they are visiting, would be in the act they are. I make it a point to visit the local market whenever I go to a new place. The market happens to be the most authentic place where you can really feel the pulse of the place. People buying essential supplies, busy going about their daily routine, vegetable sellers, fruit sellers, cyclists, pedestrians, sign-boards - it is a treasure-trove for those who love shooting street photos. I am not an ardent street photographer, but I have seen markets are one of the best places I can practice a bit of street photography and in the process capture off-beat images of the destination I am in.

Ask for permission

Photographing people at close quarters can be a problem in some places. Additionally, if you are like me it is a disconcerting thing for the first time. If you are unsure approach the person and ask whether you can take a photo of him/her. Explain that you are a photographer and you found him/her interesting and would like to take a picture for your collection. If you are just a casual travel photographer, which most likely you are, you can explain yourself and the reason you are taking the picture and most of the time it would be fine. It is all in the approach. A threatening and aggressive approach or a creepy approach would definitely be met with resistance. A smiling face can often mitigate the reason to worry.

Be aware of the local customs and practices