Journal of Mass Communication
at Francis Marion University
Spring 2008, Volume 2, Number 1
Shooting RAW
by Tim Hanson
One day a couple of years ago, outdoor photographer Richard Bernabe and I rolled into Brevard, North Carolina, after spending the morning taking pictures of waterfalls in Pisgah National Forest.
I had recently bought a new Nikon digital single lens reflex and was spending the day trying to get myself up to speed with the new technology.
Richard, who has published some 7,500 articles and photographs over the last decade, had been telling me about his approach to the craft – everything from his personal artistic philosophy to specific technical aspects of actually taking a photograph and later processing the digital file in Photoshop.
The morning’s conversation was, in effect, a ruthless reminder of just how pedestrian my own photographic efforts have been over the years. Although I have been taking photographs since the early 1970s and have had hundreds of photos published in newspapers and magazines – mostly to illustrate articles that I have written – the difference between my work and Richard’s could not be starker.
My photos might best be called utilitarian – in focus, reasonably well-composed, sufficiently interesting and overall competent enough to satisfactorily illustrate a story – but they cannot, even under the most charitable of circumstances, be called anything close to art.
Just the opposite is true of Richard’s photographs.
As with the work of all great outdoor photographers (Oregon’s John Shaw and Tennessee’s Jerry Greer come immediately to mind), Richard’s images hit all of the emotional hot buttons, those unconscious triggers that spark a profound appreciation of beauty and symmetry, shadows and light.
I didn’t think spending a day with Richard was going to uncover any artistic skill buried somewhere deep in my psyche, but I was hoping for just one or two tricks that might make me more comfortable with digital photography and to help me, in general, take better photographs.
Richard, of course, did not disappoint.
In Brevard, after we had eaten lunch at the Twin Dragons Chinese restaurant, Richard slid some plates aside and opened his laptop computer to show me in Adobe Photoshop how he processes his photos and why, when he actually takes the picture, he has his camera set on the RAW setting.
I don’t believe I had heard the term RAW before Richard mentioned it to me that day. And for those of you of who might now just be learning about RAW (it is a stand-alone term, by the way – not an acronym), let me explain.
If you own a digital camera a step or two up from the basic point-and-shoot variety, you may select the file format in which your photograph will be saved. Many people select JPEG, the format that takes up the least amount of the camera’s memory and can be easily sent to friends via e-mail.
When you use the JPEG setting, your camera is making certain “decisions” about which pixels – those multitudes of teeny, tiny little squares that collectively make up a digital image – to save and which ones to discard so that you end up with the best possible picture in that format.
When you use the RAW setting, the camera makes no decisions. It simply records and saves all of the pixels. Then, when you import the file into a computer, you and Photoshop have the maximum possible control over how your final photo will look.
Photographer Martin Evening, in his wonderfully thorough Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, writes that shooting in the RAW mode is like shooting with traditional negative film.
“The great thing about negative film,” he writes, “is that it doesn’t matter if someone makes a bad print, because you can always make an improved print from the original negative.”
Shooting RAW, he maintains, records a “master file that contains all the color information that was captured at the time of shooting.”
On the other hand, he continues, shooting in the JPEG mode is like taking your film to a photo lab, throwing away the negatives and scanning from the prints.
Many cameras now have a setting so that when you take a photograph the camera is capturing both RAW and JPEG, thus eliminating the need to choose between the two formats.
Of course RAW files are much larger than JPEGs and numerous adjustments must be made in Photoshop when processing them.
Those adjustments are made as soon as you open a RAW file in Photoshop. For example, you will be able to choose from nine different White Balance settings – daylight, cloudy, shade, flash, and so on. (You may recall seeing those choices on your camera. They help best match the prevailing lighting conditions with your camera.)
Just below White Balance are two sliders which control the temperature and tint of the photo. And below that, nine other settings – including exposure, brightness, contrast and saturation – round out the first stage of processing a RAW file.
Once those initial choices are made, you can open the file and make other more traditional Photoshop adjustments.
With RAW, you will be amazed at the range of control you have over your photographs.
After lunch, Richard and I headed back out to into the hills to take more waterfall shots – Glenn Falls, Dry Falls, Cullasaja Falls, Looking Glass Falls – but I did not use my camera’s RAW setting because I owned an older version of Photoshop that could not work with RAW.
Over the next few weeks, however, I purchased a new version of Photoshop and soon after that I was back knocking around the in mountains with Richard – this time in the southern Appalachians to capture the spectacular annual Rhododendron bloom in the Roan Highlands.
Just before sunrise on Round Bald just about 1,000 feet or so above the parking lot at Carver’s Gap along the North Carolina/Tennessee border, I had placed my tripod and camera not far from Richard’s set-up, making sure that I had a clutch of those huge purple Rhododendrons dominating the foreground of my composition, and busily clicked away as the sun slipped above the horizon.
Later, while going through the paces of processing my RAW images in Photoshop, I was able to see first-hand why this format is so popular with pros like Richard Bernabe, Jerry Greer and John Shaw – all of whom find it essential to their art.
And, yes, I was happy with the photos I took that morning and I continue to use the RAW setting to this day. But, even shooting in RAW is not a one-way ticket to creating a work of art – it’s just one of its components. The real secret of a great photograph, I am convinced, lies more in the eye of the photographer and less in the quality of the equipment, lenses and computer software.
Still, using the RAW setting on your camera and learning how to massage those files in Photoshop may move you and me just one step closer to becoming a better photographer.
Finally, for those interested in experimenting with the RAW format, a few suggestions are in order:
- Camera – You must use a digital camera that has a RAW setting.
- Software – You’ll need Adobe Photoshop CS2 or CS3. Earlier versions will not convert RAW files.
- Books – Real World’s Camera Raw by Bruce Fraser is a good place to start. So is Adobe Camera Raw for Digital Photographers Only by Rob Sheppard, the editor of Outdoor Photographer.
- Online Video Tutorials – There are a number of online videos that will show you how to work with RAW images. The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) is a wonderful resource for training videos and a virtual treasure trove of related information. There is a fee for NAAP membership and for some of the training videos, although many others are free to members.
- Inspiration – To see what a real pro can do, look no further than Richard Bernabe’s website: www.richardbernabe.com.
Tim Hanson is an assistant professor at Francis Marion University where he teaches print journalism courses. Before joining the faculty, Hanson held a variety of journalism positions, including managing editor of The Reader’s Digest Asian edition in Hong Kong, South Asia correspondent for United Press International in New Delhi and Philippines News Bureau Chief for Pacific Stars & Stripes in Manila.
College of Liberal Arts
