Quality - When is an image good enough?

Dozens of live oak trees with hanging spanish moss populate this area to create an impressive visual display. This panoramic image was created from 4 separate images, making the overall level of detail extremely high.

Whether you are just starting out in photography or you’re a seasoned professional, the question that always exists in the mind of a photographer is ‘how can I improve my images’? I have asked this question to myself many times over the years, and for me, it has been a gradual progression of continuous improvement that has led me to produce the quality images that I create today. It is all about finding the steps in your process that could be done better, or “bottlenecks”, and identifying what could be done to improve that step. There are many places to make errors in the process of making a print, so each step has to be analyzed to ensure you are creating the cleanest, most high quality end product you can. The major areas in which you should focus on are techniques in the field, post-processing, and print making. Each area comes with unique challenges and learning curves. Personally, I don’t know anyone that went to school for landscape photography, so most photographers are self-taught, which is great because there is a lot of content out there that is free (and great content that can be purchased) that will help you teach yourself the art of creating high quality photographs.

Before we jump into the steps we should address the question of why. Why should anyone care about quality? At the end of the day, most photographic content is consumed via social media anyway, where the consumer sees an image approximately three inches wide on a phone screen and maybe only views it for a second or less before scrolling to the next one. What is the point of spending all the time and effort creating a high quality image when it is largely going to go unappreciated? I guess the answer varies based on the photographer, but for me I have decided to not pursue social media as an avenue for displaying my art. In my opinion, the quality of an image is just as important as the image itself. My goal with my photography is not to have hundreds of thousands of followers and tons of likes on a social media site, but to create something tangible that people would be proud to hang in their homes or businesses. There is nothing like holding a print of an image you created, and after reading this blog, hopefully you can appreciate the amount of care and effort that goes into making the best end product possible and take a deeper look at your own photographic process to see if you can make any improvements.

This image was carefully composed, and with the use of a sturdy tripod, I focus blended two shots together to retain all of the details in the scene in the final shot.

Starting in the field, the first quality check is your technique. Are you using a tripod to steady your camera so your image can be as sharp as possible? Are you using hyper-focal guidelines with the appropriate zoom and aperture for ideal sharpness? Are you using an appropriate shutter speed for the lighting or your desired outcome? What camera and lens are you using? How could you make the composition better by making adjustments to your position? These are some of the questions that you must ask yourself in order to understand where you can make improvements in the field, and eventually these will become second nature and you can then focus on bottlenecks further along the print making process. I could write pages about each of these factors, but suffice to say that to ensure you are capturing the cleanest image in the field, you should be very comfortable and knowledgeable about your gear and settings. If you’re not, then this would be the best place to start, because all of the steps beyond this will benefit. For example, editing a photo in photoshop that is slightly blurry because you didn’t use a tripod in the field will always be slightly blurry, there are no tricks to undo that. The best way to have a chance of creating high quality images is to capture the image as clean as possible in the field. You should only be capturing images in RAW format, this is a format that simply records the light data and does no destructive processing or compression to the file.

Once you have a clean RAW file to start with this really opens up how you process the image in post processing. This section could also be pages long, but there are plenty of YouTube videos out there that can help you get started the right way. The point is that if you are not using photoshop then you are probably not creating the best quality image you could be. Because RAW files are just data, they don’t accurately represent what you may have experienced in the field. That is because there are limitations to what a camera is able to capture and compared to our vision, cameras don’t even come close to being able to record a scene the same way we process it in real time. So in order to bring a photo back to the way you saw it in person you have to manipulate the data carefully, and in a non-destructive way so that you just bring back the light, color, and atmosphere of the scene you witnessed. This can be done by adjusting the data in the RAW file using photo-editing software ( I prefer Photoshop). My post processing workflow has gotten dramatically better throughout the years, because I practice and continually seek ways to improve. I will say that I’m not perfect, but no one is. It’s chasing perfection that drives us to be better. I always start by importing my RAW files into Lightroom, but just to view the images full-screen so I can choose which files to take into edit. Once I know the file I want to edit, I open it in Photoshop. Opening a RAW file will bring up the Adobe Camera RAW window, which is a lot like Lightroom, and since it will be opened as a Smart Object, the edits we are doing are all non-destructive. I do some sharpening, remove chromatic aberrations, and usually pick the Landscape color profile. Then, once I open the file, it’s just about balancing the lights, shadows and midtones using luminosity masks, and occasionally focus blending. Sometimes I put an Orton Effect on at the end, but subtly. After I am satisfied with the overall look of the image, I will clean up any dust spots or small imperfections that stick out. That’s about the extent of my editing, I generally don’t push the sliders and stick to the luminosity masks with the goal of getting it to look like it did in the field, from my memory. Generally a photo should not take me longer than 30 minutes to edit, but if it involves exposure blending multiple layers or a complex panorama then it can go on for longer. As a note, I also have calibrated my monitor colors and brightness so that when I go to print, it will look exactly as desired. This process involved some trial and error, but it is well worth taking the time to do.

A blurry image can look good, as long as it was done with intention!

The final step in the image making process is the printing process, and this is a topic that could fill a book with the amount of content there is to learn. As a disclaimer, I don’t print my images myself. The main reason for this being that I just don’t have the time to dedicate to this craft to allow it to not be a bottleneck for my work. I always use the local fine art print shop because they have the best materials and equipment to print up to 48x60 size metal or canvas prints, and the quality is consistent everytime. Maybe one day I can dive into print making, but for now, for the sake of time and quality, I will continue to source my printed media from my local print shop.

One closing note I want to get across is that the photography I and many others create is a form of art, and because of this classification the question of quality can sometimes fall in a grey area. I went to an art festival in town this weekend and there were several photographers displaying their work for sale. Prices varied a little, but most were in the same ball-park. However, the higher priced prints were not necessarily the better quality prints, both in detail of the image and composition. It can be a little deceiving if you see a great image on printed on metal that is selling for $200, and then you see a not-so-great image printed on metal for $350. You would think there is some reason why one is so much more, right? In my experience it is totally up to the photographer, but I always cringe when I see a large print with a price tag of hundreds of dollars and I can clearly spot blurriness or what I will call low-effort post-processing. I’m not just talking about corner blurriness either, and I’m not sticking my face in the print to see small imperfections up close - I mean obvious quality concerns. I would not feel ok selling something at such a high dollar value something that did not truly reflect that value in quality. If someone were to buy the $350 print before seeing the $200 print at the next booth, how do you think they would feel knowing what they have is inferior to what else is available? That’s ultimately what motivates me to be a quality-snob and spend the extra time and attention to the details, because when you blow up a print to a 20X30 or larger, any mistakes or imperfections really start to show. If you are buying one of my prints, it is going to look good at the sizes available. I would not hang something in my own home that made me cringe at the lack of quality and would never want to have someone else feel that way either.