Photography has proven to be a lifelong passion. The cameras get more sophisticated, the lenses improve, and I moved from film to digital, but the idea remains unchanged.

I started with Minolta gear during the film era and did not use any autofocus cameras until I finally switched to digital with the Canon 20D, at which point I felt digital had equaled or perhaps surpassed film in certain ways. Years into owning Canon gear, I developed a back problem and cut the weight with the Fuji X system (in total, the weight was half). The Fuji couldn't keep up with focusing on birds, and although it is a very good system in other ways, I sold it to get better focusing. At that time, Sony was considered the best for autofocus. I have no brand loyalty for cameras. You can get good images from any camera and what's best depends on what you want to do, since each system has strengths and weaknesses.

To fix my back, I try to keep my core strength up. I also use an Atlas Athlete backpack, which has the best-fitting harness I've found among both camera and hiking packs. The smaller size also forces me to carry less. Sometimes, less is more. This is the one item I will plug... if you need a good backpack, check out Atlas. The Athlete and the larger Adventure are well made and maybe they will fit you as well as they fit me.

Over time, I have learned more and more about raw images and processing. I keep learning new things and enjoy going back to older images with my new knowledge to see if I can improve them. I suspect I have tried nearly every raw conversion software available. As of 2025, I use GIMP for the final edits, and have been experimenting with ART (Another RawTherapee) raw conversion software. I have DxO PhotoLab for super high ISO noise reduction, but I usually don't like PhotoLab's default colors and spend too much time trying to make them accurate to my eye. ART, so far, has been accurate with color defaults. I don't care for oversaturated and unrealistic color in my images; what you see is an attempt to be faithful to the scene. I find myself perplexed when I read that someone did not do any post processing; with raw images, it takes a little work to make the image look like what you saw.

Constructive criticism is always welcome.

© 1986 - 2025 John M Wright - All rights reserved.

All images are subject to Copyright Laws and remain the property of John M Wright at all times. No images may be downloaded or used without my (John M Wright) express permission for any purpose whatsoever.

Due to spam, I disabled public tags. PM me if you'd like to chat about anything photography.