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:Believe it or not, this is my most popular image ever. It's from a 6x9cm negative photographed in the early 1980s. What I don't like in the picture:There's a story with this negative. In short, what I don't like in the above are those cat teeth marks where my cat chewed this negative. Oh, and the few scratches from when she drug it across the floor. What I learned:After my cat had her way with this negative, I didn't throw it away although I was tempted to do so. How was I to know that a couple of decades later I could so easily use Photoshop to fix the teeth marks and the many scratches? As I've said before, never throw out a negative or a digital file that doesn't work. The future may hold a solution you cannot possibly predict. As I say, this is far and away my most popular image and I came so close to tossing it into the trash bin — the negative, that is, not the cat. |
