Going Beyond Your Bag

Master these techniques and expand your creative photography

Heerman’s gull in San Diego, California with some artistic license thrown in for good measure

2025 marks 20 years since I started using a digital camera full-time. Prior to that, I was a strong believer in color transparency (slide) film, and that meant whatever came out of the camera was pretty much what you were stuck with. Sure, I scanned my slides, but I had nowhere near the latitude for adjusting my images when compared with digital raw capture. Over the years, I’ve made a point of teaching myself a variety of creative techniques that allow me to get more out of my photography. While some of these techniques are performed in-camera, many involve a combination of camera settings and post-processing adjustments to deliver a photograph with impact. Let’s take a look at some of my “must-learn” techniques for modern digital photographers.

Raw Capture

Giant’s Causeway, County Antrim, Northern Ireland (2024). Raw capture allowed me to bring back highlight details in an otherwise overcast sky.

It should go without saying that if you’re serious about photography, you should be capturing your images in raw format instead of JPEG. Unlike 20 years ago, most software editors now recognize camera raw formats without any extra help. With raw capture, you have complete control over the color, contrast, and tonality of your photos. You can adjust exposure, recover highlights and shadows, and perform sharpening and noise removal to your liking. Even better: As software tools evolve and improve, you can revisit your older images and reprocess them for better results!

Long Exposures