Get the Job Done: Don't Trust Your Viewfinder

I wanted to share an example of why a photographer should NEVER delete images directly from their camera because the viewfinder can't be trusted. A photography instructor told me once that often times the photo you think you should delete could be the one you wished you had kept. As a matter of fact he never deleted images, chosing to keep even the messed up ones on a hard drive somewhere. If a photo is obviously out of focus or underexposed, I normally delete it, but this lesson has forced me to stop doing even that!

I took this photo of Cornelia during the Denver Darkroom's "Crash Flash" course on Saturday (look for a post on tips I got from this class later this week). I was very disappointed when I looked in the viewfinder and was just about to disregard that voice in my head that was screaming at me "DON'T DELETE IT!" The image was underexposed, and there was too much motion blur making the subject out of focus, and I was about to erase it out of anger and frustration.

But something about the look in Cornelia's face and the way she was cradling her body stopped me. It was one of those "in between shoot" moments I love to capture when a model is resting during a portrait session...when she thinks the photographers circling here are no longer shooting and she's off the hook from performing. I'm usually the only photographer still shooting during those moments because the model is more natural and at ease.

I got home that same day after class and uploaded the images taken from the day. Oddly enough, that image of Cornelia haunted me. I was angry with myself that I might have messed up a great shot. Inspite of myself, I called the image up in Picasa anyway and thought that I would play with it and see what I came up with. I adjusted the exposure, brighting it up a bit. I toyed with black and white versions before I finally settled on a sepia tone. And since it was out of focus anyway, I softened the focus even more to hide the blur, but sharpened the area around Cornelia's face. In Photoshop CS3, I decided to heal the circular areas around her head where the background paper had been cut because I wanted the image to have an antique, Old World feel.

And Voila! This image is now one of my favorites from the whole class! The lesson for the day: Don't trust your viewfinder even if an image looks terrible at first glance. Call it up on your computer at home and then decide if it's a throwaway or a keeper. With just a little tweaking, or playing as I like to call it, you could have yourself a diamond in the rough. Here are more images I took of Cornelia, a burgeoning photog in her own right and daughter of celebrated photographer Richard Peterson (who taught the Crash Flash course).