Almost Got Away

A lot of people like to keep every single picture they take, whether good or bad. Their reasoning usually comes down to this:  you can’t know what you will like or what processing software will be able to do in 10, 20 or some other long number of years done the road and, since storage is so cheap, why not keep everything you shoot.  However, people who think this way about their pictures probably do not use that same line of thought for any other situation.  Ripped a sleeve of a suit jacket?  Don’t get rid of the suit because you don’t know in 20 years what kind of repairs a tailor will be able to make or if ripped suit jackets will become fashionable. 

This method may work for some people. It may work for a lot of people.  But, I find such “logic” to be a bit absurd.  I don’t care how good the software gets decades from now, I am never going to go back through thousands and thousands of photographs to find the one or two or three that might be recoverable.  I would rather spend my time out getting more images.  So, if a picture is truly bad, it’s gone.  End of discussion.

However, my approach is not nearly as draconian as it might seem. After all, I give most images a fighting chance.  If a photograph is very poorly composed, is out of focus, or is extremely over- or underexposed, it is marked for deletion.  I don’t necessarily send it to the trash bin immediately, but that is where it is most likely going to end up.  Once I have gone through all the remaining images and processed the ones I like, I will review the rejects one last time before I permanently delete them to see if there were any about which I was perhaps too critical.  Rarely does this happen.

But, every now and then, I come across a picture that I judged too harshly and failed to see its possibilities. This image is one of those, and it almost got away.  During my initial review, I decided it was too underexposed, flagged it for deletion, and moved on.  It wasn’t until my final review, right before I hit the delete button, that I noticed the potential.

I like the abstract look of this image. But as I worked on the picture, it began to take on a more fantasy-like feel.  If I let my imagination take over, about a third of the way across from the left edge is what appears to be a figure wearing a spiked crown looking across the frame toward what could be a portal to another dimension.  It reminds me of some kind of fantasy film, such as 1984’s The NeverEnding Story or 2005’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I’m glad I didn’t send this one to the recycle bin.

Settings:  Canon 5D Mk IV, 70mm, 1/100 sec, f/22