Photo of the Week 2014-11-24

I read a lot about photography. I also listen to photography podcasts while driving for work. This provides quite a bit of information to take in and as you can imagine, a lot of it is repetitive, some contradictory, some garbage, some really useful. In a small portion I pick up some gems.

I was reminded of one of the gems recently, while going through my images selecting candidates for this year's Christmas card ... and then again a short wile after while I was reading an online article. It has slight variations, basically the suggestion is to go through your images some time after they were made. Some say not to look at your images for a few days, weeks or even months because the emotional attachment from the experience, holiday, event, etc. will fade and you will be able to look at the images more objectively. Others suggest that you should not bee too quick to purge those unfocused, slightly off, badly composed or exposed disappointments, that you should return to the photos sometime later. The thought here being that your processing skills or creative vision could change or improve and alter your opinion of a previously discounted image.

This was somewhat the case for me as I was reviewing images for the card. Here's the background from the time as I recall it today.

Almost a year ago, heading to the cottage with a couple of friends for a few days of winter photography, we were driving on Grey Rd 3 approaching Hwy 21. It had been dull and heavily overcast for our morning drive until the sun broke through and kissed the ice covered branches of the trees out across the field ... we stopped the car and scrambled to get our shots before the magic disappeared.

As luck would have it, I wasn't able to get into a position to compose and "hide" the utility lines running through the image. These kinds of visual disturbances in an image bother me. The light lasted only a minutes at best and the magic was gone. On my initial review of the files I was very unhappy that the lines were there and discounted the image as a candidate for any further consideration.

Roll the clock forward almost a year, and as I was scrolling through the image catalog I stopped and looked again. With different emotion, I decided that I could and would do something with it. Some quick Photoshop to touch up the upper wire (now gone) and a distant communications tower and I'm OK with this. One lower line is still there but not so much of a distracting intrusion as I once felt it was.

sun kissed

DJE