Linda From Maine wrote:
Please talk about how you got interested in post processing....
My interest in 'post-processing' began during the film era, not long after purchasing my first camera. In effect, while the slide film images I shot and had commercially processed were adequate, the 'drug store/camera shop' prints that resulted from negative films were much less so. The obvious remedy was to assemble a basic darkroom, and I began to process and print the stuff I shot.
A few years passed. In that time, I expanded into medium and large format shooting, and darkroom practices were studied and utilized while alternative processes were similarly explored. When a friend told me that Yale University's A/V department was looking for a B&W printer, I assembled a portfolio and drove on down to New Haven. A few days later, I received a phone call from the department chief. He offered me the job on a part-time basis, agreeing, in effect, to the stipulation I'd made that since I had a position elsewhere --a career-- I wasn't willing to leave, and certainly not for lesser position in another field. So, for the next few years I printed images from Yale's archives and collections, reproducing, in effect, prints of some of the 'Masters,' some known and some obscure. I like to believe I learned a few things in the process.
More time passed, and I travelled west. Blown away by what I saw, I chose to leave that career and emigrated to Utah. Shortly thereafter, luck and circumstances landed me a Ranger position at Arches Nat'l Park. Before long, I was designated the Park's official photographer (not that such a position actually existed; it was more matter of if something needed to be shot, I'd be the one assigned to shoot it). When other seasonals were furloughed during the off-season, I was retained... 'special projects' was the justification. Suddenly, learning DOS and Windows 3.1 became necessities of the job; hooked, I purchased my first computer --a rompin' stompin' Intel P-90 machine sporting a whole MEGABYTE of RAM. A townie friend supplied me with an illegal copy of Adobe Photoshop 4, and soon thereafter, I bought a SCSI-drive scanner. My darkroom at that time was the blacked-out bathroom in my park-provided apartment.
Time passed, and among other interests, I became deeply involved in archaeological/anthropological subjects. Along with more scientific pursuits, subjects needed documentation, and that required photography. I was giving talks and slide programs in and out of the Park, and the frustration I felt in discussing subjects --slide projected images-- that could barely be seen led to specialized photographic processing and processes. In 2002, I was offered the 'Featured Speaker' slot in a major archaeological symposium; I accepted since, at long last, they had a digital projector with which I could finally give a presentation that included images I'd digitally processed. Images that in their normal state could barely be seen could --with scanned and digitally enhanced film images-- be finally seen and discussed, and for me, at least, this was liberating.
The bulk of what I presently shoot is still archaeological stuff, but since interest and knowledgeable discourse is largely limited to academics, I seldom present it here. Instead, I revert back to my earliest --pre-photographic-- 'painterly' interests, and apply some of the things I've learned 'post-processing'-wise to images I find and capture in the land in which I live.
There'd be little point in providing an image or two that might illustrate the above; virtually anything I've posted here on UHH might suffice. For me, there is no such thing as an unmodified image.