How To Talk To A Photographer, pt. 29

Most of my clients are event planners of some kind. They tend to worry a lot that some little thing is going to bring all their tireless efforts to naught. When a celebrity is included, they'll often tell me to be very careful around the special person, because he or she is very touchy about photographs. In fact, I've never found the celebrity to be hard to shoot or work with.

Jay Cutler is a good example. The young lady directing me had so many details to control that I wouldn't be surprised if she took a week to relax after the Dos Equis promotion she organized. Jay Cutler, however, never even looked at me askance as I shot him, including as he failed at Jenga. The same can be said for Peyton Manning, Drew Breeze, and others accustomed to flashes in their faces.

I find that people at the top of their profession tend to have the personality to match. They're professional enough that, when being well paid to be nice, they tend to be nice. I showed this shot to Jay Cutler right after taking it and all he said was, "Oh. That's a good one."

Jay Cutler, center, fails at Jenga

How To Talk To A Photographer, pt. 28

So you understand more of what happens when a photographer develops your photographs, or "processes" them, I offer this brief video. Think of developing and processing as pretty much synonymous except that some photogs may use "processing" when they mean changing the photo in Adobe Photoshop or a similar application. I always refer to the process through which I put all your photos before delivery as "developing". That's what I've called it since it meant dipping film in chemicals to cause the picture to appear.

So developing is how I correct the colors after shooting in varied lighting, how I improve the exposure after shooting a parade at night, in general making sure the scene I shot looks as good as possible. Photoshop is used sometimes to do the same but more often to change the composition of the photograph, like removing an unwanted object.