Photography Skills Development
As a professional newborn photographer, I am constantly learning and improving my skills. It is so important to keep developing and improving your skills.
I was teaching a mentoree recently about ‘the strange thing sitting on my monitor’ while we were at the studio. The ‘strange thing’ I am talking about is a monitor calibrator. My student specifically wanted some help with her image editing and studio setup. During our session I explained what the calibrator does. We discussed how it works, and I demonstrated it in operation and explained how it is a necessary tool as a professional photographer. This was all part of her tailored one on one photography mentoring session. .
Why calibrate your monitors for photography?
I could sit here and explain why a professional photographer (If you are one, or just interested) should calibrate for better printed images, but these guys do a pretty good job at it: Why Calibrate
Personally, I use the X-rite i1 Display Pro to calibrate my screens for superior image printing quality. You can see it here:
X-rite i1 Display Pro
While we were chatting, I explained how I use wide Gamut monitors, which basically means they displays more colours accurately. You can read more about Gamut here: Wide Gamut
During our teaching session, I mentioned how you can do colour hue testing. This gives you an idea of your colour recognition acuity.
In the past I have done a few of these (You can find them online) and scored 100% accuracy. This basically demonstrates that I have the ability to see and differentiate Adobe 98 colours from each other, even with the slightest of difference.
Luckily enough, I also have 2020 vision. I think this vision acuity helps me with image editing in Photoshop and also with focussing the camera to capture images!
Not everyone can see and differentiate colours in the same way, we are all different. Some people cannot notice colour hue subtlety, and some can very easily spot the slightest of difference.
I do believe however, that having the ability to differentiate colour hue is a helpful tool and is an added strength for image post production when editing my client images to look their best.
What’s your colour IQ?
If you are a photographer, or just plain curious to find out YOUR colour IQ, you can do a colour hue test online here on the X-rite website: Colour IQ Test
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