How to ruin a photograph

Fortunately I bought a book last week-end-- Digital Photography Master Class by Tom Ang. It is beautifully put together, interesting segments, lots of photographs to illustrate the concepts, but also simple enough to help me understand the various technical aspects not only of getting a great photograph but also using Photoshop in such a way that the photo is enhanced, not ruined.

Although I take a lot of good photographs (my opinion), I also have ruined more than a few. In honor of buying this book but not yet having read it enough to claim any impact, I thought I'd share one of my recent photo attempts. Basically the hardest for me is often a photo of myself because of the skin tone problems and most especially when I had an idea of a concept and then try to make it happen.

This one began with the new fountain and my thinking how cool it would be with a woman in front of it, silver earrings, long silver hair, a black blouse, sandals, and jeans. Not too complicated. I had someone to use-- me. Slimmer choice would have been better but you work with what you have.

When we began taking the photos (Farm Boss got roped into the project because it wasn't a pose I could leap up from and quickly redo short of ruining my knees permanently), I saw fairly soon that my original idea wasn't so simple. For one thing, a gray background tends to impact the colors and the exterior of this house is gray. Then the lighting was complicated. If we took it in the morning, it would be mottled shadows from the oak leaves, then as the afternoon moved along, there would be very bright light right in front of shadows due to the house roof and angle of the sun.

Good way to ruin a photograph-- lighting with extremes.

Despite that, he took a few which came out pretty good for color. When I got them on the computer, I then saw the background. Too much stuff back there. Clutter in a situation like that tends to distract, make the eye travel around and never settle where the photographer wanted.

Good way to ruin a photograph-- don't take into account the background.

You'd think, since I am going to be the same person and can wear the same clothing, that repeating it without the background clutter would be easy. I knew that doesn't automatically work. Smiles aren't that easy to repeat and poses vary just a little to turn what might have been a good photo into so so. Then there's still the lighting problem.

Anyway, with Farm Boss's agreement to again play photographer, I cleared the background. We waited for what we thought would be the right light. The pictures once again looked fine in the camera but when I got them onto the computer, instead of the rich, glowing evening color I had hoped to see, these were grayed.

Since I was tired of having my picture taken, I thought maybe I could salvage them with one of my photo programs.

Good way to ruin a photograph-- photo shop.

My manipulation ruined one photo totally. I could have avoided that if I had saved it in its original format but I hadn't. What could go wrong? How about a highlighted look that wasn't realistic or good. There appeared to be no going back. The only consolation I had was knowing it is it is an example of what can go wrong. I also don't think there was any way to really get a good picture with that grayed tone to everything.

So I decided to use my favorite clone tool and see if I could take the clutter out of the first photo I had liked. That was kind of okay, but you know it never feels as good when I clone. It loses something in terms of satisfaction-- especially when removing something as large as a chaise lounge.

In a lot of ways this kind of thing doesn't matter for general snapshots. It's not always about the eye going to where you want. It's not about creating a message, but when it is trying to create that perfect photo, background matters as much as subject.

I am hopeful that when I take some time with Digital Photography Master Class (it has been a busy season on the farm) that I will gain more control over future results.

The following photos fall in order from grayed snapshot; to ruined by photoshop; then expression and lighting about right but cluttered background; finally to the cloned background. Nothing did what I had hoped. Maybe next time.