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:Cute fall forest scene with a nice waterfall. What I don't like in the picture:This image obviously needs a slow shutter speed so I shot the file above at f/13 and 1/4 second. Unfortunately, I didn't have a tripod to use with this slow shutter speed. The cropped-in detail above shows the blurry results of a poorly handheld shot. Luckilyo, I had read about a neat technique that could help. What I learned:We can call on statistics to help us here. Shooting a single exposure will result in pretty bad odds that the shot will be sharp. That's a long shutter speed that will almost always end in a blurred image. On the other hand, shooting a lengthy burst of exposures will increase your odds that at least one of them will have been stable enough to be sharp enough for use. That's what I did. I shot a burst, holding the camera as still as I could. That ended up being 22 exposures to choose from. The one you see at left is the sharpest of them all — handheld at ¼-second. The image at left/below is the comparable crop to the detail above. Even at ¼-second it's sharp enough for a pretty large print. Neat trick, using burst mode to increase the statistical odds that one of your handheld exposures will be stable enough to use. |
