What’s wrong with this image. Not so much, but it is overexposed and wouldn’t be easy to correct. It’s slightly blurred as well but I’m an optimist and I believe that no matter how bad a photograph is, you can always do something with it. For that reason I never throw anything away. Although this might not make a good photograph it can always be used to create something that I call Digital Art.
First thing I did with this photograph was to run it through my HDR program. Why? Because HDR will bring out some of the detail and enhance the colours a little bit.
Next, I used some of my favourite Photoshop filters on it, these are from, Topaz Labs and NIK Software. I have the complete suite of Topaz filters, They’re great for creative effects, but also for just enhancing photographs. Likewise NIK Colour Efex. It’s one of the best plugins for enhancing detail and tonal ranges in photographs and nearly all of my photographs get the NIK treatment to some degree.
Anyway, I said even a poor photograph can be used to create Digital Art, it’s just up to your imagination and this is what my imagination came up with.
Some of you might like it, some not, but next time you take a photograph and you’re considering whether it’s worth keeping, keep it. Have a play with Photoshop or whatever editor you use. It’s a great and fun way of learning how you to use your photo-editing program, as well.
Say It With A Camera 
I realize this isn’t exactly what you mean, but it still came to me while I was reading, so maybe it’s worth saying.
Just yesterday I was listening to a songwriter (David Wilcox, the American) tell the story behind a song he’d written and the gist of the story was that he didn’t realize in the moment that a particular snapshot was taken the depth of meaning in his expression and the future that it held in store.
He said, and this is what I loved, he said, “Some photographs take a very long time to develop.”
Another reason to keep even the “wrong” pictures. You never know when they’re going to develop . . or what they’ll become.
I find the transformed facial expression in the digital version of yours to be intriguing.
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First of all thank you for the comment and for sharing that little insight. In my case some photographs do take a long time to develop. Nearly always when I come back from a day out with the camera I will upload the photographs to my computer and catalogue them. But that’s it. I usually wait a day or two before I start looking at the ones I want to work with….
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I think it’s an interesting perspective. If I don’t like a photo, I generally try to crop it, and if I still don’t like it, I toss it.
Your altered photo is cool. Green’s my favorite color and everything looks good in green. Thanks for the mention below, I appreciate it!
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I used to throw everything away that I wasn’t using. Until one day I irrevocably deleted by mistake a set of photographs that I wish I still had. But wishing doesn’t bring them back. So now I keep everything, Storage space is cheap and it’s easy to catalogue photographs to find them again. My method is location, a general subject, year, month, day. i.e. Prestatyn Beach Sunset 2012 08 11
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I’m learning this 🙂
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Always worth learning, it’s saved a few for me….
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Magic stuff this post processing lark. Nat a bad start Mike but a great finish. Give yourself “Gold”.. Nice one.
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You know me Steve. I’m quite happy to get Photoshop out and have a play….
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Really nice interpretation. I too keep a picture even though I do not like it, just to check the effect of editing on it. Great work Mike.
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What a great interpretation for this week’s challenge!! I like the idea of not deleting subpar pics!! You’re right….you never know how you might use them later on!
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There is no end to what can be done to a photo if you think outside the box!
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Nice touch Mike! I don’t know why Zemanta is putting limits on us now… wrong!
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I’ve been in touch with Zemanta Support this morning. It’s an experiment they are trying. Apparently most bloggers only put a few related links in, which is probably true. I know for most articles I write I only ever put a few links in. The exception is the Weekly Photo Challenge where I put in the links of all the blogs that Zemanta finds.
If WordPress knew about this they didn’t say anything because I checked their support page and they were still saying you could insert as many links as you wanted.
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I use their links quite liberally (at least when they give me links that are relevant) and I only ignore it when the recommended links don’t suit my post. I guess we’ll wait and see what they end up doing. They hardly give me that much anyway. Thanks for the additional info. 🙂
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My entry was a long the same line of thinking. Stop on by and take a look. I’m sure you could appreciate the thought process.
Great Photo’s …!!!!
Isadora http://insidethemindofisadora.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/weekly-challenge-wrong/
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OOopppsss … I’ve typed the url with a missing word … here’s the correct one …
http://insidethemindofisadora.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/weekly-photo-challenge-wrong/
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