testmeat photoblog

i met a dude in buenos aires who had retired 11 years ago and been travelling the world ever since. despite not working he told me that he made more money then he spent every year and his aim was to spend at least one month in every country in the world before he died. this man was 11 years older than me. anyway conversation soon shifted from how he had clearly made better life choices than me to photography. while looking at photos on my laptop he castigated me for my screen setup. i had the gamma pushed up, which made everything look brighter and easier to see. he explained that this artificially brightened everything, making everything look grey instead of black and white. after a few tweaks he remedied things and the contrast and look was markedly different. the problem with this change is that i imagine most people who look at my photos online will be with computers that have the gamma pushed up. despite being told this is wrong, it means that most people will view my photos in the wrong way. that means if i process them in the right way i'll be one of the only ones to see that result. this came to mind when editing this photo, i got it looking how i wanted, with a nice contrast, silhouette and shadow. then out of curiosity i viewed it with my old, gamma-ridden settings and it all looked faded and washed out. i suppose it's too large a request to ask everyone who looks at my photos to adjust their monitors, so i'm not really sure what to do. let's just say if you don't think this photo is any good - blame it on the gamma.

here's the original