The worst photo it’s not the one where there was an exposure error and it ended up being too dark or too burnt. The worst photo is not one that lacks sharpness, and in which the subject is not distinguished from the background by how blurry it is. That’s not the worst picture believe me. The worst photo is the one that you photograph, but that never sees the light.
Unfortunately, and although I’m ashamed to admit it, I’ve had a few like this. Dozens of photos, hundreds, thousands of photos that I have on my computer right now, and that I would call “the worst photos of my life”. What I am going to tell you next is an embarrassing fact, but I tell it in the hope that others will learn from my mistake. This article is also in a certain way «swimming against the tide», because I will say something that many photographers will deny, I will be slapped, I know, it is not appropriate to say what I am going to say, it is not «cool» to tell this, but matter. It is a photographic lesson that I learned, a little late (I admit), and I would like nothing in life more than to share it with the people who read the Photographer’s Blog to share the learning.
I stopped shooting RAW because…
I have 120 GB of sequestered photos… As of today I have on my computer more than 120 Gigs of photographs that I once shot with one of my SLR cameras, but that I kept prisoner, withheld, waiting to be taken process someday. They are in a folder that I have called “Unprocessed”, a folder that I created years ago, within which I created subfolders that I called after the places, trips or events that I went to with my cameras. Moments that I considered important enough in my life to live with a reflex camera in hand, and that I put all my effort into portraying in the most passionate way possible. Moments that were so important to me that I decided to immortalize them in RAW, instead of JPG. The worst decision I made as a photographer.
Over time I saw how the size of the “Raw” folder did nothing but grow. I was supposed to find holes in my day to day to sit down and slowly process the photos that I was depositing in that folder, but that never happened, I think mainly due to the enormous amount of photographs without processing who were waiting for me there. I’m the type of photographer who comes home with four full memory cards. I don’t shoot three photos, I prefer to shoot hundreds of photos so I can choose and edit as I like. This, combined with the fact that I had decided to shoot them in RAW, made all those photos somehow kidnapped by myself, by my decision to shoot them in RAW, something that in theory should have been good, something that in theory should have helped me improve them.
I never improved them.
Quite the contrary. I gave them the worst life I could give them, I left them kidnapped indefinitely, with no acquittal date ;(
What I am telling you about is called shooting in RAW. Something that I discovered shortly after having a reflex camera and that was a revolution for me, as for most photographers, if not all. No one, absolutely no one today doubts the advantages of shooting in RAW. Search Google or Youtube and you will find thousands, maybe millions of pages, videos, tutorials, etc., extolling the supernatural powers of RAW mode. They are all right, none of those videos, articles or tutorials are wrong (even a server has published a couple of articles on this blog about the benefits of photographing in RAW). What most photographers neglect to say is when shooting in RAW mode is beneficial and when it is not. There are times when shooting in RAW is a wise decision, but other times when that would be the worst decision you can make.
When shooting in RAW becomes bad for your photographic health
Articles abound explaining when you should shoot RAW, so today I’m going to focus on when. YOU SHOULD NOT, almost under no circumstances, shoot in RAW. This is my opinion, something subjective and personal I will respect anyone who disagrees with me, but it hurts me so much to see those 120 Gigs of RAW photos on my desktop, thousands of photos, that the simple idea of thinking that I have to process them one day overwhelms me. The simple fact of writing about this relieves me, call it blogging therapy 😉
Well, to the mess. When it is better not to shoot in RAW:
- When you are going to take a lot of photos. Each one will have a different threshold, but in my case I have been photographing in RAW for a long time only when the session is not going to exceed the 50 photos. There are days that I go out with the idea of returning home with at least 200 or 500 photos. In those cases I use JPG exclusively. If I doubt, or if I am at a point where I need to rescue a couple of photos for further processing artisticI can activate the RAW + JPG mode, which, although it allows me to have RAW photos, allows me to use the JPG version as well.
- When you’re going to have to share those photos with others. People will ask you to send them the photos, at least the ones with them. If you tell them that you can’t, they won’t understand, if you explain that the reason is because you have them in RAW, they will understand less, except if they are photographers.
By the time you take a while and process them, your friends will have aged and hardly recognized themselves in the photo. I am not exaggerating, the first hours of my son’s life were exclusively photographed in RAW format. Now the kid is 2 years old and I assure you that when I open a RAW file of those I am perplexed, his face changed completely and, however, I was never able to enjoy his newborn photos, and not because he was not present at the birth , not because I didn’t have a camera at the time, nor was it due to lack of space on the memory card, the reason was simply because I photographed it in RAW and I never had time to deal with those thousands of RAW files that I have on my computer . Doesn’t that seem absurd to you? - When you already have tens or hundreds of RAW files waiting to be processed. It’s easy to devote ourselves to shoot photos only to end up accumulating them as digital RAW files. The hard part is having the discipline to painstakingly work through each of those RAW files to release of him that great story that it contains. If you want my advice, the best way to force yourself to process your RAW photos (or incentivize yourself, if you prefer that term) is to get into the habit of not shooting RAW while you have RAW files waiting to be processed. Photographing means bringing a photo into the world, shooting is only half the process. If you don’t develop (or process) the photo, you’re not really done shooting it.
To clarify, I will say that I still respect and use the RAW mode as the first time, I have nothing against photographing in RAW, I do it, and under the appropriate conditions I also recommend that you use it, but this article comes from the helplessness I feel when I see the fascination irrational that there is among photographers to capture everything, absolutely everything in RAW, and at all costs, whatever the cost. There are even t-shirts that you can wear proudly displaying the message «I shoot in RAW» (I Shoot RAW in English), as if that would make us better photographers.
Shooting in RAW does not make you a better photographer. Living in the moment, turning it into a photo, bringing it into the world (even with a rudimentary cell phone camera), letting others look at it and feel a small part of the emotional tingle you felt when you shot it, that makes you great.
Thanks for reading this. Help me spread it.