Saturday morning arrived cool and very, very overcast gray in my part of the mid-Atlantic region. Those conditions can occasionally make for great photos, but often they leave me with dull, muddy images.
The photo above of a great blue heron stalking in Colonial Lake just off Business U.S. 1 in Lawrence Township is what my camera captured about 7:15 a.m. Other than cropping in about 15 percent of the frame in Adobe Lightroom, what you see is virtually identical to what I saw when I snapped the shutter: a gray heron against a dark surface of water.
Compare that to what came up when I hit the “auto” button in LightRoom.
Big difference! The bird is a bit brighter but what surprised me was how the surface of the lake has a green sheen. Unless I’ve suddenly gone colorblind, this “corrected” photo gives a false impression.
Since I switched to shooting RAW from jpeg a couple of years ago, I’ve used LightRoom to edit my photos. Under most conditions, I use LightRoom’s sliders to enhance my photos to some degree in an attempt to get an accurate depiction of what I saw in real life.
While I studied art photography in college and graduate school and have a deep appreciation for it, I also trained in photojournalism. While never a news photographer full-time, as a reporter and editor I’ve taken many news photos, usually when I happened onto the scene or took my camera to an event because a “real” photographer wasn’t available.
While I’ve managed to take a few abstract or otherwise arty shots, my style is journalistic. In shooting birds and other wildlife, I try to get the lighting and color right to portray the subject truthfully.
As I scroll Instagram, I repeatedly see ads for apps that will excise exes and cut out other “distractions” from photos. I won’t and don’t do that, although I do crop to remove distracting branches or other elements that draw the eye away from the subject. I’ve also learned to clean up digital noise that shows when I crop in on a distant subject. The noise isn’t part of nature.
Where does one draw the line?
That’s up to each photographer, informed by the purpose of the image. With my photos, I want you to see the bird as it really is, or at least get as close to that ideal as I can.
The Jersey Birder 
I’m with you in that I try to edit to what I saw and keep colors more restrained. That said, it sometimes happens that what looks well balanced and “realistic” on my laptop appears garish and overdone on other devices.
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Good point on different devices, browsers and their settings. Your shots always look natural to me.
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One of my favorite birds, the Great Blue is hunting. And I like your journalistic style. I often try to be careful with Lightroom and stay with more with realistic colors but it’s not easy to be objective, especially if you are emotional about your work.
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I understand the emotional aspect of photography and other artistic endeavors. I rarely fiddle with the color sliders in Lightroom. I’m fact, part of my reluctance to do so is that I am not experienced in using it. Thanks for the comment, and agreed, the great blue heron is a favorite.
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