Photography vs Editing - What Matters More

What is more important in photography - talent to find interesting angle / spot, or mastery of "Lightroom"? This is a topic I’ve struggled to write about for a long time because it’s so nuanced, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. However, a few people have asked for my thoughts, so I’ll do my best to discuss this in a simple and practical way.

To start with, I’ll use an automotive example that most of you will understand. When you were a kid and got your first car, it was probably a cheap banger, some 15 year old Renault or Ford on its last legs. However, it was your car, and you loved it dearly. You’d spend every weekend cleaning and polishing it, maybe even dedicating an entire day to a full valet so that it looked immaculate.

But the issues under the bonnet were still there: the engine was still leaking oil, there was still a giant rust patch on the driver’s chassis leg, and the knocking noise from the rear wishbone gave you a mild headache on longer drives. You wanted to fix all these issues, so you began patching things up. You welded over the rust, changed the gaskets on the engine, and replaced the bushings in the suspension. All seemed great—until it wasn’t, and more issues emerged.

This led to a never-ending cycle of repairs. In the long run, the money and time spent patching up the car would have been better spent on a more modern car without these issues. But at least it was clean from all the polishing!

Now, to bring it back to photography: think of the car’s condition as the raw photo, and the polishing as the edit. No matter how much you polish an old banger, it won’t make the issues disappear; it will only mask them—until you go for a drive, that is. In the same way, no matter how much you try to edit a poorly taken photo, you can’t escape the core issues. Sure, you can relight it in Photoshop, use the clone tool, or apply some AI trickery, but it will always feel a bit off.

Editing is like the polishing stage. Even when a brand new car comes from the factory, it still needs to be cleaned, paint-corrected, polished, and waxed before being handed over to the customer. If you’ve ever seen a brand new car straight from the factory, you’ll know what I mean. This stage enhances an already good product. Editing is there to enhance and finalise an already good image.

So, to summarise: photography and editing go hand in hand, but only when there’s a good photo to begin with. A good photo will always benefit from a good edit to get your vision across and make it look the best it can. On the other hand, a bad photo will always be sub-par, no matter how much editing is done. The edit might make the image look good at first glance, but upon closer inspection, the issues will stand out.

Before diving into the “top 10 editing tricks” or colour grades, focus on what goes into taking a good photo—such as lighting, composition, and subject matter. You’ll find that when you start with a strong image, the editing process becomes much easier and more enjoyable.