The One Thing Every Photographer Needs to Do

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone is having a restful day filled with counting our numerous blessing. I’m resting, currently. This post was written a week ago!

In any case, I wanted to talk about something that I’ve learned. It’s something I heard from professors in school, at photography workshops I went to, and even just other photographer friends I had. They always said “Do this!” but it was an upfront cost, and somehow I just never got around to it. Now that I have gotten around to it, I’m here to hopefully convince you to do the same thing!

It’s Calibration. It literally takes five minutes and it does a world of good for your images. What difference does it make that you just spent 30 minutes editing that session if the colors on your screen are wrong? You’ll get the image back from your lab and think “Wow, I really thought this was a better image than that.” In my case, my computer likes to “cool down” my images, but my style is warm, light, and buttery. How was that working out for me? Well, look below for some before and afters so you can see the difference.

Pretty big difference right? Without proper calibration, my images look bluish and dark. Now, it’s not an easy fix (in that it does cost money) but if I’m not having to use trial and error to get my prints correct, I’m wasting my time, and time is money. I’d rather just pay for it and save all that wasted time, and make my clients happy! In case you want to know, I use the Spyder4Pro. It wasn’t the most expensive one on the market, but it was the one with the best reviews for the price. That’s how I roll…