RAW Foto Phun

I have to re-learn this every time — that RAW photos look bad at first.

If RAW is a new term to you, it means, more or less anyway, that the photo comes to you from the camera, unprocessed.

If the photographer doesn't specify this mode, he or she gets a processed jpeg image from the camera. In other words, the camera's software has made decisions for you. It involves sharpening, contrast, exposure, saturation and other things, I'm sure. They look finished, well developed.

Even if you shoot in RAW mode, you still see a processed jpeg on your camera screen. And, apparently, that is also what you get when you upload a photo from your camera, directly to your phone, even if you have shot in the RAW format, for when I was in the country, I would upload a photo or two per day to FB. And they looked good.

Then, I got home and uploaded the RAW versions to my computer and was disappointed.

I do know better than to be disappointed — or should — for RAW images, despite their blandness, contain a lot of information that I can use to develop the photos to my taste. But I still struggle with the initial disappointment.

After a while, I sat down and started working through the photos: a few at a time. Some people hate the editing process, but I mostly enjoy it. Crafting my photos is the closest that I can come to being an artist, for I certainly can't draw or create manual, analog art as more talented folk may do. But this, along with taking the original photo, satisfies me in some way.

All of the above has nothing to do with the post that follows except to tell you that I have processed some more images from last week, and here they are.

This is the old barn (there is another) on the property. I love the red maple at the side as well as the background fog.

There is a cemetery just off the northern edge of the property, and it was showing nice colour. I took a number of photos on a hot, sunny afternoon, which was about the last time we had sunshine that week. The first is a 7-shot vertorama (vertical panorama) and the second is a 5-shot pano.

Two photos from our trip into Apsley for groceries. The first is at the beginning of an unassumed road, basically meaning "use at your own risk." The second is another long exposure of the rapids at Eels Creek.

From Eagle's nest in Bancroft, about a half hour north of the cottage.

Another of Heather's feeding stations, which changed on a daily basis. This is a blend of 4 photos to maximize the number of birds in the shot. The two by the bread were in one shot; the other three were added. We had great fun watching and photographing the jays.

And that's it until next time.