Editing.

A local photographer posted a series of photos from a paid commercial shoot and it caused a bit of a stir. They immediately got bombarded with questions about how they got the ‘look’ in the photos.

There was a specific look and feel about the series that was very unique and the questions started to pile in.

Their response was amazing, they did an Instagram story talking about all of the steps they did to achieve that look while walking around Gastown giving precise instructions.

Then a day later they laughed at that post because it was fake.

So much of what we do looks easy and I know that flies in the face of practicing a craft and what people think about the 10,000-hour principle. We are all constantly crafting what we think will be accepted while staying true to what we want to create. It’s a fucking balancing act that can drive you a little crazy. The envy I have for someone in a job where everything is laid out for you and all you have to do is make sure those tasks are done correctly every day is huge, sometimes.

Sometimes I find myself full of glee with a project that seems like it has come straight from the heavens.

I don’t subscribe to the idea of everyone being a photographer because they carry a smartphone in their pocket. There is a piece of this journey that we all take that is very unique and often way overlooked.

It is not as easy as it ever fucking looks.

EDITING

It’s probably about 85% of what we do and when you do it well everyone wants to know about it. That’s fair and I am more than willing to share the key to that sharing is knowing the person asking on the other end has done the work. Are you going to help them move to another level by sharing or are you just going to become internet fodder in a Reddit feed?

You really don’t know.

What I do know is that the amount of hours I have spent in a dark room developing photos and film, and the amount of hours I have spent in front of computer screens is a part of the workflow most people don’t know about. When you produce something that someone wants to know about it’s like sharing your grandmother’s secret family recipe because you honestly don’t know how they are going to use it. You hope it’s with good intention but a big part of you is very apprehensive.

So much time and research goes into figuring out a signature look and feel that it’s hard to part with that without a pit in your stomach.

Can anyone out there relate?

Here are some edits I created for this blog post. I am leaving out the recipe.