Point and shoot bridge cameras, making art

I consider myself an amateur photographer. I am a photography enthusiast. I am not a professional photographer as I do not sell my images, but still, I love to shoot photos. I want to encourage those of you who have bridge cameras or point and shoot cameras to consider doing photography as an art form. I have a Canon SX40HS and a Fujifilm HS30EXR. Both are considered superzoom bridge cameras. They are more the size and shape of a DSLR but they have a fixed lens and a much smaller sensor, however, I still get some really good results with these cameras.

One thing that I found surprising when I first started shooting digital cameras is that you have to do post editing to get the results you really want. I use Corel's Paint Shop Pro 6X. The photos do not have the color and the clarity that you would want straight from the camera. What I mean is that they do not have the eye popping quality. Here is an example of three edits of the same photo. I took it on Broadway Street in Down Town Nashville TN on the fourth of July this year.

This one is straight out of the camera.

This one is a color edit that has been tonemapped

The third is a monochrome that has been tonemapped.

I think that the tonemapping gives them the eye popping quality. What do you think? I plan to use this blog to share my vision and my process. I will also show some of the great shots I took with just a point and shoot camera. Editing makes a big difference.

You can view all three by clicking on any one of them.