Wee Nugget of Advice...

Since agreeing to an exhibition of my band photography at the Rumsey Wells last week, I have set about putting together a collection of around fifty images, from the various gigs I have attended in Norwich (and beyond) over the course of the past eighteen months. Hugely enjoyable stuff – and out of it all, I'd like to pass on a tip that might be of benefit to one or two of you.

It’s little more than commonsense really, and you'll probably already know about it, but let us rewind to a little over a year ago, when I took on board the advice of that eminent old crocus Dave Guttridge, who suggested not to shoot images as JPGs, but as RAW files. At the time, I wasn’t really sure of the significance of this, but I figured that our aforementioned eminent old crocus probably knew a fair amount more about our profession than I did, so I duly changed the image settings to shoot in RAW format, and thought little more of it.

Let us return, then, to the present, where I sit here after a morning spent reprocessing some of the gig photographs. Guess what? A year on from the original shoots, I am able to completely overhaul every aspect of the photographs I shot as RAW images, starting completely from scratch with a year’s additional experience in processing, and – significantly – far more powerful editing software than I had at the time. The JPGs? They look just fine, but I have far, far fewer options in reprocessing them. As I saved them at the time, so they must remain. Thankfully only two of the fifty images were shot in this format.

This is a lesson I am fortunate to have learned, so many thanks to our eminent old crocus for the advice. I had no idea until last week that I’d ever have any further use for most of these photographs – so to be able to spend some quality time reprocessing them is a wonderful option to have.

Thanks, Dave – I owe you a pint.