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!
