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.
|
Original digital capture
What I saw that I liked:Fog at the coast. Lots of fog. Pea soup fog. What I don't like in the picture:The above grayness is so gray that it doesn't really look like fog. It looks like dog droppings photographed through a frosted glass. I gave up on this image and never tried to see what I could make with it. But, from somewhere in the back of my brain, the little voice kept saying to me, "It's not what you take, it's what you make." I decided to play around and see what I could do. What I learned:Hard to believe, but the image at left is the same digital capture as the one above. I just spent some time trying to pull something out of the pea soup. A bunch of Dehaze, a sprinkle of Clarity, a dash of color balance, and a liberal dosing of noise reduction and I found the image at left buried deep in the pixels of the one above. I even found a photographer that I had no idea was there! More and more, I think I've been giving up far to early on recalcitrant digital captures. I didn't visualize the image at left — I unburied it. And I'm so glad I did. It's become one of my favorite images from that trip. |
