What's (in) the Picture?

Lens-artists Photo Challenge #382 is about rejected photos. What do you do with photos you do not like? You can throw them away, or you can keep them. And if you keep them what can you do with them? First a story of myself, how I work. And in the end an example.

I am a snap shooter for a long time. When looking at this question for myself, I have to distinguish between the analog age and the digital age. But in both ages it is about quality, how you can assess that and what instruments are available after shooting. And above all: how can you be creative, and how much room is there to experiment?

The analog age was expensive: film was expensive, darkroom materials were expensive too. And being a poor student I shot as efficient as possible. You had to be patient while shooting, and selective. You also needed to trust your skills. Experience was essential to figure out what worked and what not. To produce good prints you needed to develop darkroom skills. And some negatives were impossible to print. But you kept them all. I never threw away negatives. That decision was beneficial in the digital age. After scanning my negatives, I properly made them look like what I had in mind when shooting them. What the darkroom did not deliver, software did.

In the digital age the cost of a photo is nearly non existent. The original photo (the former negative) can be copied lots of times. From the start technology offers instruments to oversee the quality of the photos. What you shoot is instantly visible on the camera. You can try different changes in the photo. Adjustments like shutter time, focus, and shutter opening can be tested most of the time. The RAW format offers flexibility for editing the ‘negative’ after the shoot. Software offers lots of creative tools to change the photo, or create new images.

So, do you keep rejected (bad) photos or not? I do reject photos, overseeing the result on my camera. I keep photos that can come to a good result after editing. The rest I remove straight away (e.g. bracketing shots).What I keep is stored on my NAS, where I use Lightroom as my archiving tool. I use editing tools to tweak a photo slightly. My favorite is Snapseed for web and social media publication. And Lightroom and Photoshop for prints.

The digital age is a time for unlimited creativity. The photos of ‘dinner at Wiveton Bell’ are an example of testing out the iPhone in a very dark situation. I shot about 8 frames, I kept them all but had my doubts. At home I worked them in Lightroom and Snapseed. And was surprised by what came out. And the ones that did not work were indeed deleted.

On the left the photo published and on the right the original RAW file.