Smidgen of Amazingness

Landscapes are not my forte. I feel like my landscape photos capture only a mere smidgen of the amazingness of a place. I have a subtractive effect. Unlike portrait photography, where I think my photographs have an additive effect - not just documenting as is, but looking better than one would expect. The massive scale, the clifftop precariousness, the gem0like depth of the water and magical turquoise... just don't come through.

Maybe landscape is a time to shoot RAW instead of jpeg. Jpeg compresses photos and gets rid of some info. RAW keeps everything, resulting in huge files of 22MB each, but in retaining more info, allows for greater potential in editing. Of course it's only results in a better picture if one knows how to take advantage of editing RAW photos, which I don't. Some photogs think hi-res jpegs are just as good, for non commercial/ non-national geographic purposes. Others staunchly insist nothing compares to RAW. I've avoided RAW mostly because of the file size. This month alone I've already taken about 3000 photos. 3000 x 20MB = 60,000 MB = 60GB. Also, I figure, as long as I turn out photos people are happy with, why give myself the added hassle of doing portraits in RAW?

Anyways, this is from the Mendocino headlands, about 3.5 hours north of SF. Breathtaking rocky coastline, with shear deadly overhanging cliffs plunging into unforgiving, churning water.