Am I an editor or a photographer?

When my friend Dennis first introduces Adobe Lightroom to me, I was amazed. My understanding of photo editing at the time stops at contrast and brightness. So my mind was pretty much blown when he showed me you could change the entire group of colors in the HSL panel. It would take me another eight months to finally learn more about Lightroom and start playing with Split Toning and Camera Calibrations.

Lightroom is amazing. I was not intimidated by it like I was with Photoshop. Even though I was learning very exaggerated edits, in the beginning, it still feels like I was doing photography. I probably spent 90% of energy learning how to edit during the first three months after picking up a camera. So the question occurs to me. Am I an editor or a photographer?

This shoot was a turning point. After that 5-hour marathon editing session on the train back from Beijing, I told myself to focus more on getting the shot. I was shooting at a new location at a new city. I saw this place on Instagram. I came, I liked the backgrounds, but it was obvious I needed another light source on the model. I did not bring any lights, and I went with the shoot anyways. I believe I can just paint the exposure onto my model in the post and everything would be great. I have done it before, and I can do it again. Well this time, the low exposure was too difficult to overcome.
I spent way too much time to make the shots to look barely ok.

After that shoot in Beijing, I learned a lesson. I start to spend more time planning and be more thoughtful when I take a shot. My flow was going towards a more shot-focused process and then the winter hits. I have been mostly shooting outdoors using natural light. The cruel winter blows do not make that easy for anyone to spend time outside. My state of hibernation also kicks in, so my usual weekend shoots paused temporarily.

photo by @ivvnwong, edit by me 1

Last week I came across a photo editing contest by @ivvnwong on Instagram. It is a very intriguing concept where participants are given access to Ivan's raw images and feel free to edit however they like. This contest was perfect for my month-long editing withdraw. I picked some of the images and did my edits. Honestly, they turned out to be some of my favorite edits. I was able to feel like I created something great without going out and be the person that presses the shutter button. With that feeling, the question occurs again. Am I an editor or a photographer?

photo by @ivvnwong, edit by me 2

photo by @ivvnwong, edit by me 3