Can This Photo Be Saved?

Editing digital photos is new to me. Until about a year ago, I had no idea that you could “enhance” a photo with iPhoto, and even then, I just knew that sometimes hitting that button made the pic look better and sometimes it didn’t (Undo!). I kind of stalled out there for another six months or so, until I discovered a few other features of iPhoto—pretty basic stuff like cropping and straightening. Boosting or fading color and adjusting saturation (similar but separate actions in iPhoto) came even later for me, and I still don’t really know what some of the sliders actually do. Still, I could play with my library of photos for hours and hours and hours—doing and undoing—and I suspect that if I learn Photoshop (I’m starting to dabble) someone will eventually have to stage an intervention.

In grad school I took a creative nonfiction writing class. We spent a lot of classtime discussing, sometimes heatedly, the definitions and bounds of “creativity” and “nonfiction”—namely, when does a piece take such liberties that it can no longer be considered nonfiction? Over the years there have been several “memoirs” published that some would argue would have more accurately marketed as novels, and in every such case there are those who get really bent out of shape about it. And while I can see their point, I have trouble getting too upset about these things. I figure if it’s a good read, I don’t care much whether it gets shelved alphabetically or in the Deweys.

For my own writing in that class (and I suppose to some extent in all my writing) I had my own set of rules, or at least guidelines, for how stretchy the “facts” could be. Lately I’ve been thinking about some of these same issues as they relate to photography. To completely oversimplify things, let’s call the photos that are straight out of the camera (SOOC) the “facts.” Up to this point I have limited myself to sharing (here on the blog or on our Flickr site) pictures that are SOOC or really close to it—partly out of habit, partly out of ignorance, and partly out of a possibly misguided sense that SOOC was more “true.” As I’m discovering what’s possible in editing digital photos, it’s bringing up all kinds of questions for me about what I’m trying to do with my photography and how much tweaking and changing I’m comfortable with, interested in, or even capable of.

Sometimes the decision to edit or not to is an easy one:

(SOOC)

(Colors adjusted)

Decisions about whether and how to crop can be harder. Cropping changes the composition of the photo, often significantly. Composition is, I think, one of the primary factors that can make or break a photo. My goal is to always be improving my compositions from behind the lens (rather than by cropping), but the reality is that composition isn’t always the first thing I’m thinking about —whether because I’m chasing the fleeting expressions of a two-year-old or because of simple forgetfulness or inattention to detail (that car parked in the background, that basket of laundry). But even when I am thinking about it, there are times I just can’t get the shot I want for any number of reasons—or times that I don’t even see the shot I should have taken until later when I’m reviewing the pics. In any case, sometimes a good crop can change an average shot into something a lot more interesting and dynamic.

(SOOC)

(Cropped)

Sometimes I take a shot that I’d like to keep, but no amount of realistic adjusting or readjusting will make it look right. That’s when it’s fun to just play.

(SOOC)

(Pioneer Woman’s Seventies Action)

I’m finding as I work my way through Project 365 that my purposes and expectations are constantly changing. There are still days when I just want to get the picture taken and couldn’t care less if it’s artistic or good or interesting. Some pictures just can’t be saved:

And that’s okay too, I think.