Perhaps inevitably, the end results will not always meet your aspirations and the role of editing is to take that less-than-perfect capture and turn it into a more polished output.

This is no more evident than when shooting weddings or sports you are in a time-dependent situation and have one chance (no re-runs!), often with limited gear. Divorcing editing from shooting is increasingly apparent the more frenetic your shooting becomes. As soon as you step outside, then more time is spent covering any mistakes. Only in a controlled environment - typically a studio - do you get the luxury to control every aspect of your shoot. This then gave you something to work with in the dark room. This created a dilemma: did I capture the image I wanted? The solution was to shoot multiple images - both repeats and variations - on the same theme. Whereas a smartphone shooter may well take one image, touch it up, and post it before moving on to the next, film required that there was a pregnant pause between shooting and editing that necessitated focusing on one before the other.

Core Image Editsįor the more subtle eye, editing is a far more nuanced practice that has deep roots in the film world. This is no more true than when shooting with a smartphone where the camera’s weaknesses are brutally exposed, to then be deftly covered up by some clever automated post-production which goes completely unnoticed on a heavily over-saturated, over-sharpened, selfie on Instagram. In truth, most of us sit somewhere between those two extremes because we don’t have the luxury to outsource, don’t get it right in-camera every time, and because some things you just can’t do in-camera.

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