Anybody who is at all serious about photography will get what I’m about to say. Sometimes you take a photo and then spend time editing it but you just can’t decide if you like it. You spend more time editing it, trying different ideas and playing with different crops. But you still can’t quite settle on an edit you like. Well this is one of those photographs.
I made this photo during our New Years Day walk. We had just climbed a short, but sharp, hill and as I turned back to see how far behind I’d left the girls I the sun glinting through the clouds. I kind of thought it was a good composition and that the sunlight directly on the lens would look cool. I suppose it was a snapshot at best.
On getting the days photos onto the computer and working through selecting my picks I thought twice before flagging this as a pick. It still didn’t seem right to me.
My workflow is to first flag photos as picks and rejects. The rejects are then deleted and I can concentrate on the picks. So, I came to this one quite early as it was at the start of our walk. I skipped past it.
I guess I still wasn’t quite sure.
But, I came back to it. I tried a few colour edits that just didn’t work, then tried black and white. With a bit of tweaking I came to this version of the shot. But was I happy with it?
I suppose I’m never 100% happy with any edit of a photo. For me there is always room for improvement and I am constantly learning and evolving.
Let it grow
I sat on it for a day or so, wondering if I should share this one. In the end I decided to put it on my Instagram feed and see what people thought. It seemed to gather quite a few likes but it was the comments that struck me.
You see I don’t usually get much interaction on Instagram in terms of comments. But I got a few with this photo.
So, I might not have thought much of it but others like it. It gave me a different perspective and I looked again and saw that it is actually a lovely shot.
If you are a budding photographer then never dismiss an image at first sight. Give it chance to grow and evolve. Let it ferment in your mind for a while and then come back to it. When I was a wedding photographer I used to wait 24 hours after shooting a wedding before even reviewing the images – just to allow my mind some breathing space. Maybe I should have done that with this one too.
Thanks for reading.
Dave
