Flower and champagne
Shooting raw and the importance of the little things.
I bought my first DSLR camera (Nikon D40) in conjunction to my birthday in 2008, and these were the very first photos I took with it. A series that resulted in 4 photographs from my birthday dinner. They hold a special piece of my heart not merely from being first, but also because I really appreciate the colors. The vibrant pink and green in the Anemone offers contrast nicely and the dark blue and gold gives a nobel feeling to the champagne (Taittinger by the way).
(click to make bigger)
Sadly this was before I started shooting raw, so being jpeg-only they offers me somewhat limited opportunities to correct what maybe wasn’t perfect from the beginning. But learning from my mistake, I now always shoot in raw. Always! So don’t make this rookie mistake just to save a few MB, it’s not worth it. Even if you’re just playing with the camera not expecting anything useful to come from it, you never know, and then you are going to want the raw file someday.
One thing a raw file can’t correct however is bad composition. For example, it still bugs me that I didn’t think to include the entire rim of the champagne glass. It makes no sense, which pretty much sums up my sense of composition at this time. I’ve since realized that it’s the seemingly small details that can make or break a picture. Lucky for me practice makes perfect a little less clueless, and through experience I’m slowly improving!