mud pies to medicine: The Problem With RAW

Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Problem With RAW

For those of you who don't know what RAW is, my general understanding is something pretty basic like this: Normally you take a photo and it downloads to your computer as an image, usually a jpeg. With RAW, the camera takes in a lot more information about the scene so you can change a lot more when you download it to your computer. The two biggest perks, I find, are the ability to change the white balance (ie if you're picture is too yellow you can completely fix it, not just try to cover it up) and the exposure (basically how bright your picture is). A lot of times I find myself adding a little blue to balance out some severely yellow indoor light and increasing the exposure to really brighten things up. There are a couple problems you'll encounter- RAW takes a lot of memory, you need some good editing software to actually open a RAW file and make it usable, and now I dislike every other picture I've ever taken! The first two, not really problems. The third is ruining my resolution! I look at an old photo that I could edit but it's only a jpeg. I always adjust white balance and exposure now on my photos, even just slightly. Not being able to do that with the older ones is extremely frustrating. That is why I've been taking so many new photos. But I am going to do it anyway. Post some pictures taken before I started shooting in RAW. It makes editing harder, but I guess that's good practice!

#24 BC Swank. This photo was taken at a science conference for... yeast genetics! O yes, yeast geneticists, we're a wild bunch. Actually yeast conferences are better than most because it necessitates free beer... because you know yeast make beer. This conference what at UBC in Vancouver. Vancouver is such a great city- a highly suggest a visit. And what made it better was being a guest at UBC and enjoying cocktail hour in a garden on a cliff overlooking the bay at sunset. Talk about the perfect setting for a wedding!

#25 Pot O Gold. I took this one a while ago visiting my now boyfriend while he was living on the island of Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic). We went on a whale watching tour and saw no whales. But we did enjoy some rum punch, a big boat in the sun and watching a storm over the island develop into a full rainbow. Unfortunately I didn't have an ultra wide angle lens to capture the whole thing but the rainbow did a full arch over the island and then a second lighter one appeared! This was truly the most fantastic rainbow I have ever seen! Dominica is a gem of an island- it just might be the gold at the end of this rainbow. PS. A polarizing filter at the right angle can really make the colors of a rainbow pop.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The inspiration you ask?

I miss making mud pies. There is this huge rock in my front yard. To call it a rock really does it a dishonor. It is a boulder, brought home by my father on a huge dump truck after he blasted it out of a work site. My mom one day told me that even though it is nearly 2.5 feet high, 6 feet long, and 2.5 feet wide, that it was, in fact, only half-showing. The scientist inside of me was disbelieving and set out to get some proof. Clad in a dress, bow in my hair, and my best accessory, a shovel, I trudged outside ready to prove my mother wrong. That is when the digging began. I dug, and dug, and dug, and nearly all 3.5 feet of Danielle fit in that hole when I had reached the bottom of the rock. That became my digging spot, my mud pie kitchen. Each day it was dug, and each evening it was filled back in. Sometimes the holes were small, sometimes they were enormous, and most days the hole was turned into my mud mixing bowl with that rock as my counter. The novelty never wore off. The ebb and flow of my childhood was, in many ways, measured by the ever-changing depth of that hole in the front yard, the hole that never really disappeared even each day after it was filled in. Even though the grass has grown back in that spot, there still remains, an indentation, the scars of a childhood well lived and the disbelieving scientists I have always been.

So, you ask me why I want to be a doctor? I do not want to be a doctor. I want to open a mud pie bakery with the cash register on that rock in my front yard. But, somehow, I doubt I would stay in business long, for the world seems to have lost its taste for mud pies. I guess being a doctor will have to do.