I expect that I am pretty much like most people, when it comes to photography:
- Not every shot is perfect, and I can always find some flaw with it!
- What I have in mind for a shot doesn’t always show up in my camera…
- My best shot is the one that got away!
If this sounds familiar, this post is for you!
The date is July 6, 2007. My wife and I are in Nova Scotia, where she’s competing in an international agility trial with our Cardigan Welsh Corgis. I drop her off in the mornings, after which I go exploring with my FJ Cruiser for things to see, experience and photograph. In the latter parts of the morning, I arrive in the little town of Digby and decide to stretch my legs and see what I can find.
At the end of Water Street, I see that the tide is out, so I clamber down to the beach and see the fog hanging over the bay.
Trust me, when I tell you that is was an awe inspiring view! I was happy that I caught the Bay of Fundy at low tide, as the dock shows the high water mark pretty well! Was I impressed with my work? Not really… This image wound up being one among many taken in Nova Scotia, most of which were more exciting than this one.
This photo remained in the dustbin of my storage until almost 7 years after I took it. In 2014, I was perusing some of my past photos, as I was reorganizing my storage, and I chanced upon this photo. By that time, I had done quite a bit of work creating HDR images and really wished that I’d taken a set of exposures instead of a single shot when I looked at this file.
With 5 exposures or even 3, I knew that I could make something out of this scene. But, what if… HDRsoft’s Photomatix Pro has the ability to generate a 1-shot HDR image, which I really hadn’t attempted before. On a lark, I decided to try it on this image.
After the 1-shot processing, I used the tone mapping capabilities of Photomatix Pro to create the slightly more dramatic image that you see here. Of course, looking at it now, I see many flaws with the processing, which makes me want to redo the process and create something even better.
If I can restrain myself from doing just that, I might get to some of my many travel photos from various years, as I’m at least 7 years behind schedule!
The moral of this story is to give your throwaway images another look and think what possibilities exist…
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