On this week’s episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I talk about the idea that editing may be one of the most personal parts of photography. Not that behind the lens isn’t important, but long before someone knows anything about us, they can often sense something in the way we process an image. After all that is a part of what we emphasize, what we remove, and how we shape what we see in the light, color, and mood of an image.

In the classic photography example of seeing, two photographers can stand in the same place and, in this case, capture nearly identical RAW files. They go home and when we next see them and their images, they have created completely different photographs in the editing process. One may lean into contrast and drama, while another chooses softness and ambiguity. Neither approach is right or wrong. Each simply reveals a different way of seeing.

So as you think about how your approach your work and those ideas becomes an act of being who you really are, start to think about how color grading can reflect emotional memory more than visual accuracy, and why our edits might say as much about who new are as the click behind the camera. I also wanted to leave you a little home work so I also talk about how revisiting old images can reveal changes not only in our style, but in who we have become over time.

Photography is often described as a way of documenting the world. But editing reminds us that photographs are also reflections of the people making them.