A recent conversation with photographer buddies made me realize that there are a number of photographers out there that don’t work in black & white at all. A number, I’m sure, that’s rapidly growing.

However just because you’re not familiar with (or even like) black & white photography, it still pays to dabble in it every now and then, for a number of reasons. Not only will it be good for your photographs, it’ll be good for your photography.

Overnight, Lightroom became king and Photoshop became the tool I brought out once in a while for more involved retouching. I even avoided taking images into Photoshop after developing them in Lightroom (a common process) simply because Lightroom’s simplicity made Photoshop look positively arcane.

At least, it did. I may be rethinking my stance after playing with the PSKiss Toolkits.

I recently got my hands on a copy of the PSKiss Skin & Scenery Color profile and preset pack, and while I’m not much of a preset kinda guy (aside from a few home-cooked ones and a small handful of black & white presets), I was impressed enough with the camera profiles that I figured I’d talk about it some.

While sorting through photos from a recent road trip through the Southwest a couple of weeks ago, I came across a photo that wasn’t good enough to keep but made a perfect candidate for a quick demo of the salvaging power of RAW images. I cooked up a quick before/after shot (not unlike the one above) and shared it on Reddit.

For those not yet familiar with it, 500px is a relatively new photo sharing site that… okay, yes. I know. Another one? But this one is a little different. Whereas Flickr is meant as a sort of “socially-oriented photodump” and SmugMug is meant as a sort of “pro-oriented photodump,” 500px is more of a “pro-oriented online portfolio” than anything else.

Tomorrow begins my sojourn back to the Philippines, the first in almost a decade. Half the time, I can hardly believe it.

As much as I hate the term “Developing Nation” (there’s nothing wrong with calling it a Third World Country), the moniker is incredibly apt. Metro Manila has been developing at a near-exponential rate, and in the past nine years, the topography of the cities has changed drastically. It will be a homecoming to an unfamiliar place.

I can’t help but wonder if, just as we will never again see another band like The Beatles, does the saturation of images brought on by the dSLR revolution and the fragmentation of major news outlets mean we will likewise never again see images with the global and cultural resonance of Afghan Girl or Tank Man? If there is more wheat now than there was chaff yesterday, has it become nigh-impossible for any single image to make a meaningful impact? Have we reached the end of iconic documentary images?

So I’m a good day or so into the ‘cleanse’ and it’s going well so far. It’s actually a little scary how much more time I have in the day, just from cutting out twitter, facebook, and other “distraction” websites.

The other day, John Mayer (yes, that John Mayer) put forth a challenge for people to go on a “Digital Cleanse,” the goal of which to ‘defragment’ our brains from all the inundation of little bits of chatter we’re filling it with constantly.

I decided to take him up on it.

After some fiddling and tinkering, I finally managed to get a simple lightbox installed to let you view the images full-size.