Why I shoot in raw and don’t share them

When I first started photography I kept hearing this word ‘raw’. Had no idea the weight this tiny little word carried and I just naively ignored it and continued shooting in JPEG. I remember specifically one day sitting down and YouTubing and Googling like crazy because I just couldn't grasp what shooting in raw meant. I didn’t get it. I’d switch my camera to raw and the photos were blah. Flat. Dark and just lifeless. Then it finally clicked. The raw photos are supposed to look like this.

This analogy is what helped me: Think of a meal. Let’s go with meatloaf. If you get a “JPEG” version of meatloaf, you are getting a plate with delicious meatloaf fully cooked and ready to be eaten. Now if you shoot in raw and get the “raw” version of the meatloaf you aren’t getting the dish ready to be eaten. You are getting all of the ingredients for you to cook it. You can customize it. You get to remove certain ingredients you don’t like or add in more options. Basically you can tweak the entire meal to how YOU want it. You are in control. Sure you can tweak the already prepared meatloaf to some degree. But you can’t take out certain spices or flavors and you can add in things but ultimately the dish is what you are getting. Same applies to shooting in raw. The photos are flat and lifeless but you get to customize them during the editing process. The camera doesn’t apply any initial editing like JPEG does. You can be as creative as you want and thats where the magic of editing begins.

Hope that makes sense. This is why I don’t give out raws. You don’t get to see the finished product until post. I may show you the back of the camera but likely it’s a dark image (because I like to underexpose a few stops) and looks just ok because it hasn’t been “cooked” yet.