Wow, what a tough topic Egidio has given us this week. You’d think the way I hold onto clothes, I would do the same with pictures. But I don’t. I tend to toss the pictures I don’t edit or think I would post. So here I go twisting again. I went back to when I began taking pictures–more as a tourist than a photographer.

This taught me three things. 1. As I said, I don’t keep pictures. 2. I do minimal edits because I don’t have the technical ability. 3. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear! At least I can’t. I can be out all day photographing, but rarely take more than 10 minutes in the editing process.

My examples today were taken from 2010. My camera at that time was a tiny Lumix, 10 mega Pixel camera with a zoom lens. I didn’t get my first SLR until 2013. In my mind, these images prove that gear does matter! I now use a Fujifilm XT3. These were edited in Lightroom Classic just for this post. They were not edited before.

This first two photos emphasis size with a giant sequoia and small boy. I think I had some sense of composition back then. I edited it to bring out color and sharpen.

In the next two, I tried to un-center the cactus by cropping and did some sharpening.

For the next examples, I cropped and worked with the lighting. I put more light on the deer, uncentered it and darkened the background.

Finally I took out most of the foreground twigs in this picture. To be honest, today I probably wouldn’t have even photographed it! Now that I’m looking at the pictures, I see that they are different?? Somehow after finding the picture, Lightroom couldn’t find it again. But, you can see that I did the editing work.

So, there’s my rejected photos. Will I change my lazy ways? Probably not. I enjoy photographing images more than editing them. Thanks Egidio for helping me realize that I need to get it mostly right in the camera. 😊Please remember to link to Egidio’s original post when you respond and use the Lens-Artists tag.

Last week I loved seeing all your minimal photos in black and white in response to Ritva’s challenge. I’m a fan of both, so it was a treat. Next week Tina will be leading the challenge, so be sure to look for her post. In the meantime stay safe and be resilient.

31 thoughts on “Lens Artists Challenge #382: Rejected”

  6. I think the shot of the deer shows the biggest improvement here – your edit really helps him to stand out! As you know, I’m one of those that enjoys the editing almost as much as the initial photography and I also tend to hang on to all but the very worst shots – although as I rarely ever go back to them I’m not sure why!

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  7. Anne, thanks for indulging and participating in the challenge. Some photographers are good and capture things in camera. I’m not one of those. I have to edit to fine tune my vision. Your edits here show clearly that most photos can gain from editing, even if it’s minimal. Take, for example, the deer and cactus images. You turned them from blah into wow. And that took very little effort, it seems. Great shots and gallery!

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  8. You got me smiling with “I enjoy photographing images more than editing them”. So many times I don’t get what I want while clicking and my mind says “don’t worry, you can work it afterwards”… In effect, I’m cheating all the time. Anyway, you are better at editing than you give yourself credit for and your photographer’s eye is still working long after shooting as this gallery clearly shows 🙂

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    1. Thank you Sofia! You’re not cheating. You’re using tools in post that will get you to your vision. The difference between us is that I don’t have the ability to vision what I want in the picture other than what I see. I have to be happy as I click. Make sense?

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  10. Great examples, Anne. I think as you do. I don’t want to be a good editor. I want to be a good photographer. I’m not into much editing at all, but like you, I do crop photos…….a lot……and sharpen or increase light and definition.

    I don’t find editing software fun to learn either. My brain just wants to have fun, not work in retirement.

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