Digital Photography is an Art

Last night I took this photo of unripe goosberries in my garden.  I think they look like a happy string of Chinese lanterns.

I am a baby in the world of photography, but I find it such good practice for composition of an image.   I shoot with my brother's ancient Cannon Rebel, which is starting to limp a little and show it's age, but I still love it.  I was given (as a wonderful gift!) the Adobe Lightroom program for editing, which I also love.  I still have a long ways to go in learning to use both camera and computer for tasteful, judicious and appropriate editing, but the learning curve is a fun one.

The digital camera is incapable of detecting and recording as many levels of light and color as the human eye.  Using an editing program is not cheating.  It is simply another tool.

For the sake of comparison, here is the shot above, SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera), before edits.   I actually like it quite well as it is, with more muted tones.

The choices and levels of adjustment in editing are very broad, so I have to be careful not to "overcook" the image.  I tried to simply "plump it up" with deeper color, attempting to make it appear more like my eye saw before taking the photo.  I tend to use a little "artistic license" and have a hard time knowing if I've gone too far.  But I think I'm satisfied with this one.