Do you ever look back at your old photos just to appreciate how far you’ve come as a photographer? Do any of those old images shock and horrify you?
In the Site Stats section of WordPress, I like to browse through the “Clicks” to see what pictures people well, clicked on… I’m always curious about what images inspire people to linger a bit longer. Today, I found that someone clicked on a very old image from when I was in Ireland in 2010, and seeing it again horrified me. Back in October 2010, I had just started using a DSLR, and I just had to shoot everything manually because shooting in auto would have been too easy. Considering I had no concept of ISO at the time, it’s no wonder so many of my photos look like crap to me by today’s standards. On top of that, I thought I had to post process everything and bump up the saturation. God knows why. Anyway, I decided to re-do a couple of the pictures I posted on my blog so long ago and do a side by side comparison.
Let’s start with this sad example. What the heck was I thinking here? I can’t believe I posted this to my blog with the sky all over exposed and over saturated. Why did I think this looked good?
Next, let’s examine poor old Mary, who appears to be praying for less saturation and a sky color actually found in nature. Again, I was a little heavy-handed with the wrong buttons while editing. Natural is better.
And finally, we have Hore Abbey. Yes, truly an unfortunate name and a victim of post processing errors. In the first photo, the focus is on the cows in the background and the abbey is very dark. In the do over, I lightened up the foreground using “Levels” in Photoshop. Levels is one of my favorite tools – you can make minor corrections to a photo that make a big difference.
I considered replacing the pictures in the posts from 2 years ago but ultimately decided against it. For better or for worse, that’s just where my skill level was at the time. My blog documents my journey through life and photography, and that journey isn’t always perfect.
Jolene's Life in Focus 