This photo of Vanesa is from December 2014, so not really all that long ago – barely over three years. I think I was, by that time, a fairly competent photographer. It is a huge surprise to me to find that this original image was so incredibly dark. It’s not a misfire, there’s hundreds of these from that session. If I had to guess, I was trying to do with tiny, bare speedlights what I’d now do with giant modifiers – umbrellas and softboxes, etc.

These days I’d get it all as close to finished as I could while I was still shooting. This means less processing later, and greater image quality because I don’t have to push things so far beyond their starting point. Exactly how important this is can be a bit philosophical in this modern age of camera sensors that are so capable. In the early days of digital photography the sensors couldn’t offer nearly as much headroom, and pushing the image even a little bit would quickly reveal the limits of the digital data.

But all that’s another way to say that, with my current camera, I can take a shot like this and process the crap of it, slide those sliders as far as I want, until it looks right: