WYSIWYG

by Joseph T. Sinclair

I was sur­prised to hear this is actu­al­ly dis­cussed as a “tech­nique” by pros. But when you think about it, it is a tech­nique. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get - pro­nounced wiz­zy wig) is an old com­put­er expres­sion to say that with a GUI (graph­i­cal user inter­face) and a col­or screen, what you see on the screen is what you will get when you print the dig­i­tal file (e.g., doc­u­ment, image, or photo).

How­ev­er, we can use the same expres­sion with a slight twist to name one of the best ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy. WYSIWYG can also mean: what you see is what you got. That is, you can tell instant­ly whether you got the pho­to you want­ed with your phone cam­era or whether you need to retake it. Don’t ignore this pow­er­ful new pho­to­graph­ic capability.

Here’s the first pho­to and the retake.

This retake is a small mat­ter per­haps, but some­time small mat­ters are the dif­fer­ence between a com­plete pho­to and one that seems careless.

Pho­tog­ra­phers of old would have spilled blood to get such a con­ve­nient tech­nique that today we take for grant­ed. They would have been delight­ed. And so should we. It’s so easy to stop and check up on the pho­tos you’ve taken.

I have tak­en an oth­er­wise great pho­to only to dis­cov­er that a tree branch was grow­ing out of the ear of the per­son in the pic­ture. That’s a shot that needs to be retak­en right now. You may nev­er get anoth­er chance. With WYSIWYG you know to shoot again immediately.

Here’s the first pho­to and the retake from the top floor of the DeY­oung Museum.

The trou­ble with this tech­nique is that it’s so sim­ple that any­one can do it. We shouldn’t even call this a tech­nique. It’s just com­mon sense. And on top of that, what more can I write about it? Noth­ing more I can say is going to make it more understandable.

So all I can tell you is keep WYSIWYG in mind. It’s a gift from the gods to pho­tog­ra­phers every­where. It’s per­haps the most use­ful new pho­to­graph­ic tech­nique that whirling dig­its of the com­put­er rev­o­lu­tion have brought to us.