To 'Shop or Not To 'Shop?

I’m having a bit of a crisis, mentally, that started slowly has picked up steam in the last few weeks.  A couple of years ago I bought my first DSLR, the Nikon D40, their entry level model at the time.  No great wonder of technology, but a step up from my Olympus digital camera I was dragging around at the time.  Right out the box I got better snapshots.  Not pictures, snapshots.  I had no idea what I was doing.  Set it on “Auto” and started firing away…

Let me back up one step.  A few years before that, soon after getting my Olympus as a birthday present (October 2006, 2005?), I picked up a copy of Photoshop Elements (v. 1, which gives you an idea of how long ago that was).  I toyed with it now and then, did a couple of interesting things, but – always – you could tell immediately that the photo had been digitally manipulated.  Still, it was a fun to play around with on a rainy day…

Back to the recent now.  I started reading about DSLRs, a lot.  Of course I read about my D40.  I started experimenting with Exposure Compensation, changing White Balance, using “P” or “Aperture Priority” mode instead of “Auto.”  I bought a circular polarizing filter.  My snapshots got better, and occasionally through trial-and-error, luck, whatever you call it, I would get a photo that I liked enough to share with other people.  The more I shot, the more I learned.  Hundreds (hell, thousands) of mistakes were made.  But, with each outing, I would come back with more “good”, or “o.k.” shots and less flat out worthless crap. 

I picked up a few books, read them thoroughly and repeatedly, tried things covered in them.  I started following half a dozen or so photography blogs, as mentioned in a previous post (these blogs are listed on the right hand side of this blog).  I read, learned, got simultaneously inspired and intimidated. 

And then it happened.  I was reading a blog entry of one of my favorite photographers.  At the top of the post was a photo of a lighthouse in the fog, with a beautiful beam of light projecting from the tower into the dark. Simple, stark, absolutely beautiful.  Then I got to the part of the post where the photographer described, step by step, how they added the beam of light using Photoshop during post processing.  What???

Now, I know during the days of film and darkrooms in the basement photographers burned, dodged, exposed, etc., and that – technically – what is the difference between that and using Photoshop to manipulate an image? 

Except, in my eyes, there is a difference.  A film photographer may have exposed and tweaked and tweaked, but he didn’t have the ability to drop in a beam of light coming out of a lighthouse.  Or to take a picture of a road winding through the autumn woods of Vermont and then “add some black to the pavement to punch up the contrast.” 

Or, do I just need to stop whining and pick up a copy Photoshop CS5?  And a new laptop with enough memory?  And a Wacom tablet?  And Lightroom?  And Nik ColorFX?  And Photomatix?  And………