Before & After: Discovering Painterly Process

Here’s the before I promised — the starting point of this little adventure into learning a new style.

When I first opened the raw file, I could see the potential… but I could also see exactly why it fell flat. The light was nice, the pose was good, but the overall feel didn’t match what caught my eye that day. The subject blended into the background, the atmosphere wasn’t quite there, and the mood I remembered seeing with my own eyes just wasn’t showing up on the screen.

That’s what pushed me into learning more — digging into masking, tonal layers, selective adjustments, and shaping light in a way that brings the subject forward. I started studying how artists like Patsy Weingart and James Thomas Watts handle edges, contrast, and softness. They don’t just “edit” — they guide the viewer’s eye, and that’s a technique I wanted to understand.

Little by little, things started to click.
A soft mask here… a lifted highlight there… dialing back clarity in the background so the egret gently steps forward. Suddenly the image looked more balanced, more intentional, more pleasing to the eye.

The difference between the before and after isn’t just color — it’s direction. The final version puts the focus exactly where it belongs: on the quiet beauty of the egret. The soft, painterly tones help the subject stand out instead of getting lost in competing textures.

All of this took practice — a lot of it. And I know there’s still plenty more to learn. But that’s the fun part. Every new technique feels like another tool added to my artistic toolbox.

This journey is teaching me that photography doesn’t end when you click the shutter. Sometimes the real magic begins when you sit down and ask yourself, “How do I bring out what my eyes saw and my heart felt?”

I’m getting there — one image, one experiment, one tiny breakthrough at a time.