For several years after acquiring my first digital camera, I always shot in JPEG format. I was aware of the option for shooting in RAW format, but I had no clue what that was, so I lived by the motto “Don’t play with something you aren’t familiar with because it’ll come back to bite you.”
I began to read Popular Photography and Shutterbug magazines (both now no longer in print), where I saw the subject of using RAW format in picture-taking surface in story content a lot, so I made a point to learn, understand and try it.
I eventually felt bold enough to make my first foray in early February 2009 for a shoot in my neighborhood after a hefty snowfall. It seemed like a “safe” opportunity — nothing of serious import to lose if it didn’t turn out to be something I liked and/or could deal with easily.
When I opened my RAW pictures in Photoshop Elements and saw how I had much greater control of the key snowfall image attributes of light/exposure and color, I was sold. I was particularly in awe of how much detail I could pull from the bright snow when editing a RAW file. I’ve shot in RAW format for almost everything ever since.
Even though February 2009 came two months after I launched this blog, I never did a post about my leap to RAW format.
