Monday, February 22, 2010

An old dog, learning new tricks

That old dog would be me. With an upcoming birthday, I'm beginning to actually feel old these days. Not to worry - it's probably just the never-ending winter.

The new trick I picked up recently comes from a new member of my Blog Roll - Outdoors with Butch. It involves editing your photos.

I've only recently started following Butch's site, but it is very apparent that he is a keen observer and photographer of the world around him. And he does something I plan to do in the coming months. He takes a photo, edits and crops the original, and saves the new photo as a separate picture while maintaining the unaltered original. I, on the other hand, take a photo, edit it, and save the changes, having only the new, edited version, and losing the original. Butch posts both the original photo and the edited, cropped version on his blog, showing both the before and after of the picture. I really like the way that looks on his blog, and plan to do the same on mine.

Thank you, Butch.

I occasionally do the same, but it's only by luck that I have both the before-and-after shots of my favorite picture.

The photo below is one of my favorites, and the one I'm speaking of. It was taken almost 2 years ago in Panama, and was absolute luck. My buddy was fighting a big black marlin, and I was holding up my digital and just snapping pictures in the general vicinity of the fish. I probably took 20 shots. Almost all were worthless. Then, toward the end of the string of photos, was a picture with the tail of the fish re-entering the water. Oh well - at least we got something. On the next picture, this was in the upper right hand corner of the photo. I cropped it and got a great photo. Well, it might not be great, but I like it!




The first photo, with just a hint of a marlin in it




The Lucky Picture




The final product


MORAL OF THE STORY: Take LOTS of pictures. Some will be memorable!

9 comments:

Ashley Rae said...

Great shots of the marlin! I hope to see one someday!!!

That is a great idea about the before and after as well, I will have to try that.

You are only as old as you feel :)

Blessed said...

Yep - lots and lots and lots of photos - it's the beauty of digital photography!

I always save the original, but then I have fifteen years in Graphic Design/Photo Editing/Marketing/Advertising type work - I save the original and most of the versions along the way... out of habit! Never know when a client will say - you know... I think I did like what you did a couple of days ago better than anything else we've come up with - can we just go with that? :)

Wolfy said...

Ashley - sometimes I thik its better to be as old as I AM rather than as old as I feel, 'cuz sometimes I feel like I'm about a hundred and fifty.

Blessed - Digital photography is a beautiful thing! I can't tell you how many thousand pictures I took with film that were no good

Thanks to both of you for commenting!

butchadams said...

Hey Wolfy, thanks for the fine compliment. My Uncle Geo. showed me how to do that a couple yrs.ago and I'm sure glad to unknowingly pass it along. I call it a picture within a picture.I will have to tell him about this. He is 72 I am 66 so we are all old. I just started this 5 yrs. ago. This pocket size, point and shoot camera of mine just keeps on going, just like us. Thanks Butch

Mark Kautz said...

Hey Joe. I don't think I'm quite that talented with pictures. I'll have to mess around and see how well I can "massage" one. Nice Marlin picture, though. You know that I've mentioned that old vs. feel old thing, quite often. For all you youngsters out there, don't kill yourself when you're young and you won't feel like we do when you get old.

Mark

The Hunter's Wife said...

Nice pictures. Lately I've been telling myself to carry my camera everywhere. So many things I've missed because I was without my camera.

I do the same with most of my photos - keeping the org and the edited version.

Rebecca said...

I for one will take ALL the photo advice I can get! This was great.

Oh, and nice fish *whistles*

Anonymous said...

Very impressed with those pictures, Wolfy. I am glad that you pointed out what you picked up from over on Butch's blog.

Us ol' guys need all the help and tricks we can get to help us look good these days!

Eric said...

Marlins are beautiful fish. Great photos