Every Picture Is a Compromise
Lessons from the Also-rans
Most photography websites show the photographer's very best work. Wonderful. But that's not the full story of a creative life. If we want to learn, we'd better pay attention to the images that aren't "greatest hits" and see what lessons they have to offer. Every picture is a compromise — the sum of its parts, optical, technical, visual, emotional, and even cosmic – well, maybe not cosmic, but sometimes spiritual. Success on all fronts is rare. It's ok to learn from those that are not our best.
This is a series about my also-rans, some of which I've been able to improve at bit (i.e., "best effort"), none of which I would consider my best. With each there are lessons worth sharing, so I will.
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Original digital capture
What I saw that I liked:I saw this and was only a little interested. Nothing particularly exciting, but what the heck. What I don't like in the picture:I foresaw this as a b/w. I was wrong. It's about as boring as I could imagine. Oh, well. What I learned:I was tired. I grabbed a snack and a nap in the truck. When I woke up, I saw the moon was coming up. I pulled up my moon tracking app on my phone and saw it was going to pass the very trees I had just photographed! It took a while, but eventually I got as lucky as a photographer can get and the moon rose perfectly into the scene. Or . . . The above was actually a night shot I tried to turn into a midday shot, realized it look crappy, then found a moonshot from a different trip and copied and pasted the moon into the shot from above as a night shot. Look at the clouds — the identical clouds. So did I cheat? Or did I make art? It's a philosophical debate. I've seen photographers argue about this. I have no idea, but I do know I like the one at left, a lot. |
