Photography Skill VS Photoshop Skill

Given that you have decent DSLR camera body+a decent lens. They other major factor of producing a stunning photo might be just skill. But whether it is photography skill or Photoshop skill. I believe will be a lot of argument. Nonetheless I believe the fundamental of Photography skill is utmost important if you don't rely too heavily on photoshop or I would say post processing.


Remember when we are in olden days, we do not have any Digital camera, our films counts are about 36 pieces in one single roll. That's really precious film count. Everything is film and analog with hard copies. Photographer skill are really important, because they have limited shoots that time. Capturing the moment is really an important skill. But when Digital camera is introduced, there are many photographers just capture everything and decide the "moment" later. If today your camera just allows you to capture even 100 pictures, I believe the photographers will just throw it away or replace it with another with bigger capacity.


With today technology, we also can do something that hardly achieve 20 years ago. HDR photography. Most of our DSLR comes with bracketed exposure shooting. Camera will shoot 3 consecutive images with 3 different exposure depends on your settings. It seems a dull picture can be easily merged to HDR image to create a stunning picture. Using either photoshop or photomatix, this is an easily task as 1,2,3

If you have a decent DSLR, it should allow you to take bracketed images. Just make sure to have a tripod if you don't have a fast burst rate. Either use a photoshop or photomatix, then you should be able to produce below photo easily. If you need in depth tutorial, perhaps you can refer to other side first. I will write up a detail tutorial later.

Here is the final result of the photo. Though it looks abit dark and surreal. That's what make the photo looks like a painting. Nonetheless the photo can be fine tune to many other settings. As usual, if today you are not a too good photographer. 


Perhaps HDR can be another solution for you to produce stunning picture. If you can spend more time on photoshop and also post processing, a better fine tune picture can be produced. As usual, HDR is best for landscape photographer. For Portrait it can be useful, if your subject is facing under the shadow, and you do not have a powerful flash gun.