We All Make Mistakes

Isn’t it amazing how sensitive some photographers can be?

Whatever it is that we photograph, we always try and put our best images forward.  Makes sense doesn’t it?  Why on earth would you show your bad images to people?  All fine and well but when you get too caught up in filtering your best images from those that, in your opinion, are not perfect you start walking a fine tightrope.  Filter your images to much and you will start finding it difficult to keep your creativity going as you will become too caught up in creating ‘perfect’ images rather than just following your visual passion.  Share every single image you capture and people might doubt your ability as a good photographer.  This is where some photographers get very ‘tense’ about their work and any criticism about it.  What to do?

No matter how hard  you try, no matter how good a photographer you are you will take bad shots.  It’s just how it works.  Check this out.

I am currently in Johannesburg and since I am up early anyway I thought I would have a go at photographing the Johannesburg skyline.  The image on the right is more or less what I had in mind and you’ll see it again when it’s time for next month’s wallpapers.  The image on the left… well that was one of the first attempts.  Yeah, looks like a rave gone horribly wrong but there it is.  Exposure was off, shutter speed was wrong, I started moving the tripod and the list goes on.  Even though it is a complete and utter mistake that will more than likely find it’s way to the ‘not-sure-if-I-can-actually-do-anything-with-this’ folder I learnt a lot from the experience.  And that’s what it’s about.

In a refreshingly open and honest blog post David duChemin recently wrote ‘Confessions of a so-called Pro‘ in which he confesses to some of the photographic mistakes we all make all the time but are too afraid to own up to.  Absolutely brilliant post and I have no doubt that any photographer who reads it will find at least some degree of truth in there.  If you have not read it yet, open the link in a new tab / window and check it out immediately after you finish this post.  Inspirational stuff!

There is no doubt that in wildlife photography there are various challenges which means that there is always the possibility of getting missed shots, blurred shots and wrongly exposed shots.  Yeah, really.  This means that there will always be some images that you don’t want to show to other people.  Yeah, really. I am most definitely the same and normally try and showcase only my better images but there are a lot of images that, for whatever reason, just did not work.  So picking up from there, I thought I would share a few not-so-perfect images that I captured during the last few weeks.

I took two of my not-so-good shots, of which you can see the RAW files in the corner of the images below, and did a bit of post processing to see what could be saved from the photographic carnage.

We sat watching a pride of lions at a watering hole when this young ellie cam storming over the dam wall.  He was obviously not impressed with the presence of the large cats and stood there staring at them.  It was late afternoon and the background behind the ellie was completely burnt out which, thinking about it afterwards, would never had worked.  The image was always going to be a pretty bad silhouette but in the heat of the moment I just fired away.  I had my camera set to spot metering as I was shooting the lions in the golden sunlight so the resulting RAW file was, well, terrible.  When I opened the file in Aperture I lifted the shadows a bit and added a little bit of saturation which left me with the image above.  Much better… almost?

As with the elephant image, on this particular morning we shot directly into the rising sun as we followed a lioness as she was looking for her cubs.  I normally try and expose slightly to the right but this particular image was completely overexposed but again, a few adjustments kind of saved it.  Drop exposure, lift the blacks, increase the contrast and lift the saturation and you have an almost workable lion image… almost?

The goal is, was and always should be to get your image as close to perfect in camera and then only make a few minor adjustments afterwards.  Not like the above examples!  This being the case, we all need to make peace with the fact that we will not always be able to get every single shot perfect.  It just won’t happen.  No… it won’t.  The moment you make peace with this and start enjoying the photographic journey rather than worrying about getting every single shot perfect you will find that you enjoy the process even more.

Forget about judging yourself or what other people think of your work.  Shoot, share and enjoy.  By doing this you will make mistakes, learn from the process and ultimately become a better photographer.

Bye 4 now and remember… we all make mistakes!

Gerry