Shooting in thick sulfur smoke with burning eyes and barely enough air to breathe, Mitchell Kanashkevich still managed to walk away with images that communicate something real. Most edits of a scene like that end up feeling like nothing, and the reason almost always comes down to one flawed habit that’s remarkably easy to fix.

Coming to you from Mitchell Kanashkevich | mitchellkphotos, this sharp, principle-driven video makes the case that the biggest mistake in editing isn’t technical at all. It’s opening a photo and immediately chasing a look: punchy, cinematic, dramatic, whatever feels good in the moment. Kanashkevich argues that everything in an edit should follow from a single question asked before you touch any slider: “What do I want this image to communicate?” He walks through real examples to show what happens when you lead with that question versus when you don’t. A foggy scene, for instance, doesn’t need contrast cranked up to make it dramatic. It needs contrast pulled back so the silence of the fog actually registers. A dark, shadowy frame doesn’t need lifted shadows to look “correct.” If the mystery lives in that darkness, you deepen it with a curve adjustment and let parts of the frame fall away. 

The section on processing for a sense of story is where things get particularly concrete. Kanashkevich shows a before-and-after where most people would treat every element in a frame equally: everything contrasted, everything popping. The problem is that when everything gets the same attention, nothing reads as important. His approach is straightforward: decide what matters in the frame, emphasize those elements, and let everything else fade. A bucket that adds nothing to the story? Let it fade. A floor pulling the eye away from the faces? Darken it. The faces and the light falling on them carry the story, so those get brought forward with radial filters, brushes, and AI masks. He also covers portrait editing, specifically the trap of overprocessed skin and glowing eyes, and makes a clear case for restraint: if you’re second-guessing an adjustment, pull back.

The video also covers color transfer, a feature that pulls a color palette from one image and applies it to another. Kanashkevich keeps a library of images from photographers and film stills he finds inspiring, and uses those as source material. The point isn’t to transform a photo’s look entirely but to reinforce what the image already is, matching the palette to the mood rather than slapping on something that contradicts it. He shows the results on several of the images used throughout the video, and the effect is visible but deliberately subtle. 

Check out the video above for the full breakdown from Kanashkevich, including his complete editing process on multiple images and why he ends the video with a strong warning about what no amount of post-processing can actually fix.