It’s not your camera. It’s not your lens.  It’s not the paper, or the printer, or the print lab.

It’s your post processing.

The thing I’ve noticed over the year & a half since I went to NAPP, is that my photos immediately jumped in quality. It’s not just the ability to introduce contrasts.  It’s also the sharpening techniques, color awareness, painting techniques, dodging and burning.

All of that came together in this, a favorite (recent) image:

Fiery Icicle

Post processing: slight saturation increase in reds and oranges.  Slight luminosity increase in blues, decrease in reds and oranges.  Addition of clarity filters, slight increase in overall contrast.  Reduction of global saturation and luminosity across houses.  Increase in luminosity on icicle. Single-pass sharpening on luminosity layer.

It took less than three minutes.