The more I learn about photography, the more critical I am of my photographs.  Exposure, color, saturation, cropping... are image qualities that can often improved with a little editing.

Years ago I watched my dear wife tear open each package of newly printed photos and delete (rip up) any shots she thought were "bad".  After converting from film to digital in 2003, I print only select shots.  Realizing this, I promised my wife that I would delete all "bad" shots and print only "good" ones.  Of course I kept that promise, but now it doesn't often come to that!

In my photo gallery "Enhancements: After and Before" you can compare Straight Out Of the Camera (SOOC) vs. edited images.  The edited "after" image is shown first, followed by the SOOC image.  Which image do you prefer?

I edit images, just like I edit writing.  This blog isn't the rough draft, and most images are not SOOC.  Sometimes in writing, and sometimes in photography, you get everything right and there's nothing to edit.  It doesn't happen very often and when it does, it sure feels great!

I edit photos because I want to present the best images I can.

P.S. I learned that Ansel Adams altered the 1970's reprint of his most famous photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, to remove some random clouds in the upper sky area that always bothered him.  And in his celebrated Winter Sunrise, The Sierra Nevada From Lone Pine, California, Adams deleted the big "LP" that the town's high school students had laid out in whitewashed stones on the hillside.