The Art of Post-Production

The Technical Side of Photography: What Happens ‘Beyond’ the Click of the Shutter Button?

When people think of photography, they usually tend to picture a simple press of the shutter button, essentially ‘freezing’ a moment in time. But for professional photographers, the art behind a stunning image goes way, way beyond (the click of the shutter button) “taking” the photo. From understanding technical camera settings to mastering complex editing software(s), there’s truly a science and personal craft behind every final video/photo.

In this blog, I am going to “shine some light” (hahaha get it? its okay if you think its not funny. Im trying.) into the technical aspects of photography and explore the most essential post-processing tools that help elevate images/videos to a professional standard.

1) Exposure: Balancing Light

To me, the beating heart of every photograph is light. Photographers & videographers have to not only control, but manipulate light using three critical camera settings: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. These three elements make up what’s known as the “exposure triangle”, and mastering the “exposure triangle” is ESSENTIAL for capturing well-balanced videos/images. With that being said, I will give a brief summary of the exposure triangle below: If you would like a more detailed explanation, please refer to my other blogs: “Why don’t photographers give out raw photos?” & “Video Equipment & Tech”.

• Aperture - controls how much light enters the camera through the lens and affects the depth of field.

• Shutter Speed - determines how long the camera’s sensor is exposed to light, freezing motion or creating blur for effects.

• ISO - measures the camera’s sensitivity to light, affecting the brightness or darkness of an image.

A photographer needs to understand how to balance the exposure triangle to ensure that the image is properly exposed, sharp, and visually appealing—especially in challenging lighting conditions like low light and/ or high-contrast environments.

2) Composition and Framing: Creating beautiful Visuals

The technical side of photography isn’t just about settings; it’s also about how you compose the shot. Photographers apply rules like the rule of thirds, leading lines, symmetry, and framing to guide the viewer’s eye and create a balanced, well-engaging image. Understanding composition allows photographers to tell a story through their images, whether it’s the intimacy of a portrait or the splendiferous landscape.

3) The Role of Post-Processing: Bringing Photos to Life

While the camera captures the ‘raw’ moment, post-processing is where a photographer’s creative vision truly comes to light. Using advanced software, photographers enhance the details, adjust lighting, and add their signature style to the images. Signature style a.k.a color grading. Three of the most powerful tools in the photographer’s arsenal are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, and Adobe Premiere Pro (or Final Cut Pro for video editing). Before going on to the next topic, Premier Pro & Final Cut Pro are very similar video editing applications. The major difference between the two: Final Cut Pro; Magnetic Timeline, Premier Pro: not a magnetic timeline & you are able to cut and delete clips with ease. Now, there are more pros to Final Cut Pro, but we will save that for another blog :)

Adobe Lightroom: Enhancing and Organizing

Adobe Lightroom is an essential tool for photographers when it comes to handling large batches of images and making basic to advanced edits. Here is how Adobe Lightroom enhances a photographer’s workflow:

• Non-destructive editing: Lightroom allows photographers to make adjustments without altering the original file, giving complete freedom to experiment with different looks and styles.

• Color correction and exposure: Lightroom’s sliders make it easy to adjust brightness, contrast, highlights, and shadows, ensuring the image is perfectly balanced to your liking.

• Organization and cataloging: With thousands of images from a single shoot, Lightroom helps photographers sort, label, and rate photos for easy access during editing. Also known as “culling”.

The amount of photos I have culled through, I should be an olympic medalist. Adobe Lightroom helps tremendously when culling your photos. You are able to label your photos with a flag and/or a star rating. This helps ME much more than you could realize, when you are taking 6,000+ photos at an event or a private shoot, having those filters is extremely, extremely important. Organization is a top-priority when editing and developing thousands, and thousands of photos.

Adobe Photoshop: Precision and Creativity

While Lightroom is perfect for overall adjustments, Photoshop is where the fine-tuning and creative work happens. It’s the go-to tool for pixel-level edits, such as:

• Retouching and blemish removal: Photoshop’s tools allow photographers to remove unwanted distractions, perfect skin tones, and correct minor flaws throughout the image.

• Advanced compositing: When combining multiple images into one, whether for artistic purposes or creating a complex design, Photoshop’s layers and masking tools are none other than the best. Although, there is an application out there that you can buy the application outright, unlike Adobe Photoshop. I will have another blog post on this specific application in the coming few weeks!

• Creative effects: Whether adding dramatic lighting effects, manipulating colors, or creating surreal compositions, Adobe Photoshop is an amazing tool to help fuel your creative design dreams. Yes, it is A LOT to learn, but in the grand scheme of design & photography, it is one of the best applications to fully understand and learn.

Conclusion:

Thank you for reading my “Art of Post-Production” blog post. I hope this post gives you (the reader) a more basic understanding of what and how much work goes into “post-production”. I personally, have created my own Adobe lightroom presets & Final Cut Pro Luts to speed up my post-production process. People love very quick turn-arounds. I will personally say, my quick turn-around times is what keeps customers coming back for my technical and artistic side.

Thank you again for reading, and azx visual media hopes you have a great thanksgiving and rest of your week! Please continue the pursuit of making your own art, and keep making the world a better place. Until next time.

Best,

azx visual media - Alex Shirra