At the time, I was a graduate student, studying engineering, and I would wander into various seminars at school where they provided free pizzas. 

Luck would strike then that I attended a seminar by a renowned Computer Science professor, teaching Computer Vision-- "Computer Vision" is to actually learn how human see things so that we can teach computers.

He explained how the human cortex worked in a few simple examples, it dawned on me. 

What I was doing in editing was ALL WRONG. $$$$....

I did further research days and nights on the topics and studied all the books I could find in human vision, art history, graphic design, and psychology. 

One day, I had an epiphany-- The ultimate sharpness I was searching for was not just finding the best parameters for unsharp masking or smart sharpening or AI sharpen techniques using some editing softwares. 

It's way much more than that. By studying the grandmaster painters and the world famous graphic designers and photographers, I found out that perception of sharpness is all relative, and in order to maximize that sharpness, I had to use a brand new technique that makes people perceive that the photo was super sharp.

Based on this discovery, I created a completely new workflow, by reverse engineered how humans actually see and react to things, instead of blindly following the workflow taught by the gurus.

The number one mistake I made before was I applied too much editing and the viewers could instantly tell that it's "photoshopped". It's the worst when it's too obvious. It's a big no-no. No one likes your photos once they sensed that you have "edited" the photos! It's ironic :)

So the first concept I learned is to be "stealth", to be subtle. For each kind of adjustment, I have to use different amount based on each individual image, thus the concept of "dynamic". 

It's always pushing the editing to a point of being "subtle" where viewers almost don't see it, but can "feel" the effect. What do you mean, Tin Man, you may ask.

Imagine when you are walking in a dark alley at night. Have you ever had a feeling that someone was watching you but you just couldn't see it? That's it. You felt the eyes, but you couldn't visually see them.

The second discovery I made was that I needed to create tension/drama. Instead of increasing or decreasing saturation of a particular color, I always do it in pairs. 

For example, when you are in a crowded area and you tried to listen to some music in your phone. You can either increase the volume and drive yourself nuts (increasing the saturation all the way), or you can use a noise-cancelling ear phone to get rid of the noise. Then, as the background noise is removed, all of a sudden, the music seemed a lot louder than before, right? 

Here, for example, when I want to brighten an area in my image, I also darken the surrounding in a subtle way. That way, the brightening is more natural yet more powerful. 

Now, with subtle adjustment and creating tension using "pairing", one tension is not enough. Thus, I tried to stack it. By stacking various tensions in a subtle way, I was able to create an ultra powerful workflow while the viewers would feel that the image looks so natural. 

Remember the 80-20 rules? I removed 80% of my previous workflow (which of course saved me 80% of the editing time), and focused on optimizing the remaining 20% and developed a secret formula with a specific order and fine-tuned parameters. 

When I applied this digital workflow to my RAW files, magic happened. I began to consistently received recognition of my photos. People would tell me, "Your photos are enchanting. It's like magic that draws my eyes in!"

I received international awards including the Grand Prize and Winner of Wildlife Category in the prestigious Nature's Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International. My photos consistently got featured in social media sites. I received numerous print sales requests. 

The year when I mastered the whole workflow, I re-applied the editing process to all of my photos. 

Here's a story I want to share with you. The North American Nature Photographers (NANPA) group would feature one photo a day from a sea of wildlife photos. To be featured once would be an honor. My photos have been featured there many times, but that's not the end of the story. Each year, at year end, there is an app called TopNine, where this company will find the 9 most liked photos out of all the photos one posted in a year. When NANPA posted their TopNine in 2017, I couldn't believe my eyes. 6 out of the 9 top photos were taken by me, all edited with this digital workflow I called "Dynamic Tension Stacking"!