There’s an old saying I hear folks say in West Virginia: “Firewood warms you three times. Once when you cut the tree down. Once when you split and stack the wood. And once when you burn it.”
There’s great benefit in going out and taking photos. Like cutting a tree down. We learn a lot about ourselves, our camera, and the world around us. There is great benefit in sorting and editing our photos. Like splitting and stacking the wood. We enjoy the satisfaction of slowly adding to our collection of works of art. But what if we stop there? What if we never use the wood we stack? Who will enjoy these little treasures? Only you. And maybe not even you, if they aren’t assembled into an accessible treasure chest.
There are times when we cut trees down and let them lay. There is some wood that will be split and stacked and never burned. But if stacking the wood is as far as we go, then what’s the point of continually adding to the stack? Before too long, we’ll not have time to keep adding to the stack. If we don’t use our photos, we’ll lose our desire to even create them.
This is why it is vitally important that we learn how to share our photos. In the long run, it becomes the very reason for taking photos in the first place! If we don’t learn how to share our photos, we’ll lose the need to take photos, and we’ll stop taking photos altogether. Like the Dead Sea, always receiving, and never giving, our photography will eventually die.
And it’s ok if your photography dies. If your goal is to create a neat, orderly stack of split wood, well, once our stack is big enough, it’s fine to stop. We’ve reached our goal. The older we get, and the more responsibilities we take on in life, it’s ok if you don’t have time to spend on photography. It was a good skill to learn. And you never know how it might be a blessing later in life!
But what good would it be, later in life, if you knew the skill of taking pictures, but still didn’t know how to share those photos, or deliver them to the client?!
No matter how far you plan to go with your photography, you need to learn how to share your photos!
And not just simply sharing them. We need to learn how to have a smooth post-processing journey for our photos from beginning to end. If we don’t enjoy the journey, or if our workflow is complicated or time-consuming, then when things get tough or we don’t have the time like we used to, then the most common thing to do is to stop altogether. The process from card to display is where many budding photographers stop. When the post-processing journey is filled with frustration, one by one, they drop off. They jumped into photography because they loved taking photos. But as soon as they realized just how much there is to photography beyond just taking pictures, they lose the steam, and stop pursuing photography altogether.
This is what happened to me. I love taking pictures! But I get busy, and I stop processing them. I cut corners a little here, and procrastinate a little there. Over time, my computer becomes a hopelessly disorganized mess. I can’t find the pictures I want. I have so many pictures to sort through. And I suddenly don’t feel like adding to the mess. What’s the point of taking a photo if I won’t do anything with it? So I stop taking pictures altogether. “I’ll just enjoy the moment and store it away in my memory instead.”
However, if you have a post-processing workflow that’s set up to work for you, and you enjoy the process of processing and sharing your photos, then you’ll keep taking photos! A winning post-processing setup is very important. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be as complex or as simple as you want. But you need to have one set up that works for you! If it works for you, you’ll enjoy it! Keep pushing through to the end of this course so that you can start enjoying the entire photography experience, from beginning to end, from card to display!
