One of my favorite things about photography these days is the extremely wide range of creative looks I can achieve right inside the camera. Back when I was a strict RAW shooter, I captured everything flat and then spent time later on tweaking the colors, tones and other visual effects of the scene in order to produce a captivating, final image.
Thankfully those days are long gone.
My preferred style of shooting now is to make creative decisions right there on location, when I’m immersed the mood and environment of my scene, adjust my camera settings and capture a final JPEG that matches my own mood at that time.
Fujifilm shooters know just how good the straight JPEGs look that come out of the X Series cameras. In addition, the Fujis contain an awesome set of creative tools, film simulation profiles and other effects that let you come up with unique looking images without having to resort to later processing.
In fact, most modern cameras produce great looking JPEGs and they all have some internal settings that allow you to modify the look of your scenes.
This approach helps keeps your creative process in the moment when you have your camera in your hands. It also keeps your photography rooted in the actual picture taking process as opposed to the “sitting at your computer process.”
Although I recognize that some photographers love the digital darkroom aspect of photography, I’ve found wonderful satisfaction in the fun challenge of trying to walk away with a finished image that I love.
To give you an idea of the kind of style diversity I enjoy with my photography lately, here are a few recent images all captured with my Fujifilm X-T3. For most of these, I’m using different film simulations, varying between rich, bold colors, subdued colors and the warm/cool monochrome settings.
With some of these shots, I’m using Miniature Mode, or customizing the color and exposure by playing around with the Highlight/Shadow Tone and Color controls.
Here’s another post that shows more examples of this technique. Hopefully these examples help spark some ideas of your own. I encourage you to try playing around with your camera controls and see where the fun takes you!
