Never be to quick to judge a photo, allow yourself time to ponder some and then some more.
If I had quickly assessed the photo below and then hit delete, I would have missed the opportunity to push and improve my photographic post processing abilities.
This was I grab shot, I liked the interaction that was going on between the two men in the doorway. The photo is not well framed, it looks overexposed (for the faces) and the red of the tree in the left hand bottom corner of the picture detracts your eyes from the main subject, the men in conversation.
To be honest, I actually shot the picture with my camera set to monochrome and was shooting for black and white using my camera’s RAW file format. This meant that the resulting file was a RAW unprocessed file. Although the image in the viewfinder was monochrome the RAW file contains just the minimally processed data from the image sensor and does not register in black and white, I would have needed to switch to JPEG to do that but I wanted to exploit the data captured in the RAW file.
Here is the final post-processed image, which is much more dynamic and atmospheric and captures the feeling of the moment I saw when taking the picture.
I love the intensity of the interaction between the two men in the doorway. The lady about to walk into the café seems like she is oblivious to the two men and is deep in her own thoughts. The other customers sitting around add to the dynamism of the whole photo and I added some motion blur to help create the final effect.
I’m pleased with the result….
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