Seattle, WA: Local photographer Wyatt Jones recently decided to switch from shooting in raw to JPEG format in an effort to spend less time editing images. However, he soon discovered he was spending even more time explaining his decision to horrified fellow photographers who were developing negative opinions.
“I figured JPEGs would be quicker – just shoot and share!” said Jones. “But when I told my camera club friends, you’d think I just kicked a puppy. They kept asking if I had gone insane.”
Outraged photographers immediately began cropping up, inundating Jones with reasons he must shoot raw: white balance adjustments, exposure recovery, the ability to re-edit years later, and most importantly, better shadow recovery.
“Eric went on a 15-minute diatribe about how shooting JPEG was ‘destroying your creative potential’,” said Jones. “He said I may as well just be shooting on a Polaroid. But they’re my family photos, not the next Avengers movie!”
The pleas to switch back to raw fell on deaf ears. Later, Jones proudly posted a JPEG photo to his photography forum titled “The Raw Truth.” He hoped his unprocessed image would develop into an interesting discussion.
The horrified responses poured in, critiquing the color, noise, and lack of flexibility. “This would have been easily adjustable if you had the raw file,” remarked one commenter. “I could have recovered at least 2-3 stops of shadows from the raw data,” contributed another. “Your children must be so ashamed to be in this picture,” said one particularly rude commenter.
After spending four hours defending his artistic choice, Jones finally admitted that perhaps he had acted in haste. The next day, he sheepishly swapped his camera settings back to raw, hoping to regain positive exposure among his peers.
But the photography club was still fuming over the debut of Jones’ undeveloped JPEG image. They asked him to resign as President and charitably offered to only reduce his membership level from Gold to Silver status.
“It’s like they had a personal vendetta just because I shot one lousy photo without raw,” complained Jones. “I thought artists were supposed to be open-minded!”
When reached for comment, Jones said only: “Next time, I’ll just hire an editor to handle all the developing drama.”
