Does a bad photo equal a wasted photo?
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
When I first took up photography, I wasn’t very good at it. Many of the photos I took weren’t composed with much thought, or were snapped ad-hoq. Below is one such example, taken in the Lake District:
Had I taken my time to set up and been patient, there might have been a good shot to be had. Instead this was the result. So opportunity lost.
A couple of years later I was moving some files when I came across this picture again, and I ended up spending some time using it to experiment with creative effects. And this is the result:
By breaking the image into different layers and applying different effects to each, such as Découpage, Gaussian Blur and colour filters, I was able to convert this missed opportunity into something that, though not a classic, certainly has its value. I was able to learn some new techniques and turn the original into something a bit different.
This made me realise that whilst in years gone by these sorts of shots would have been discarded, with the advent of digital photography, and software such as Photoshop, we can still make some use of them. The ugly duckling might not become a swan (pardon the pun), but you might be able to create something interesting and different. Even film negatives can now be scanned and manipulated in the same way.
So before you discard the photos you’re not happy with remember that there might be something more worthwhile trying to get out. At the very least, they can offer the chance for some experimentation, learning and inspiration.
For example, applying new styles to a photo that didn’t turn out right might lead to inspiration for a future attempt with a slightly different approach, or lead to an idea that can be applied to other, better quality pictures later on.
Rather than wondering if a bad photo equals a wasted photo, perhaps we should be wondering if there is even any such thing as a bad photo…
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