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:A dawn sunlight on a hanging fixture outside my living room window. What I don't like in the picture:First, as you can see in the above RAW capture, I shot this through the living room window from my easy chair. You can see the frame of the window which has got to go. What I learned:The more I looked at this, the more I realized I had a rare example of an image that would work in a vertical panorama format. Usually, panorama are long horizontals. This has that kind of aspect ration (actually 3.27 : 1) and reminds me of a Japanese tanzaku. A tanzaku is typically that long piece of paper that includes a poem, found hanging underneath a small bell, catching the wind and tinkling the bell. Any reason we can do such a thing with our photographs? 2nd Chances: What I might try nextI should look through my Lightroom images for other potential vertical panorama images. That could be fun!
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