Shooting Raw Is About Insecurity, Not Possibilities

The justification photographers reach for when defending raw files is technical: more latitude, recoverable highlights, adjustable white balance. Sound in principle, largely irrelevant in practice for photographers making personal work rather than delivering to clients with exacting technical requirements. Paris lovers Shooting raw is really about refusing to commit to decisions you make at the moment of capture. I shot raw+JPEG for over twenty years, and looking back honestly at what I was doing, I was building an escape hatch from my own judgement. Every frame stayed provisional; nothing was quite finished. The future me, sitting comfortably at a desk with unlimited time and hindsight, was being trusted more than the present me standing in front of a scene, which amounts to a peculiar vote of no confidence in your own abilities. Film photographers had no such option. You set your exposure, pressed the shutter, and that was the work done. Bracketing existed for high-stakes…