Can I do it better?

Not better than another photographer, but better than I’ve already done.

This post is about another strategy that is helping me cope with my recent apathy toward photography, namely to pass by subjects that appeal, but that I’ve taken good pictures of before. I mean really good. Excellent, even. Some of it has to do with the idea that the world doesn’t need another photo of ______________. However, most of it is that I get overwhelmed with the sheer number of shots I come back with and the amount of processing time it will take. Not that every photo requires hours of time, but even the quick ones taken all together equal a lot of computer time.

So I’ve been trying to concentrate on subjects I haven’t shot before or done a good job with. Trying again is a challenge and that gets my brain going which is good. Also, it’s satisfying when I do better with a cool subject that attracts me. I think it’s the latter that hasn’t been part of my photography for a couple of years now. Too many times I’ve come home with shots that didn’t light up my brain much either in taking them and even less with processing them. So by restricting myself to things that haven’t worked for me before, I find that I’m more excited about the field work and by the editing when I get them home.

This first picture is a good example of that. While I have taken a decent photo of Early Meadow Rue, I’ve never tried to shoot its cousin, Tall Meadow Rue even though it also grows in the yard. It blooms later and is, as you might suspect, a very tall plant. Tall = moves all the time in the least amount of wind. But the other day I decided to give it a go and started with some specimens using the yard/lawn as a backdrop. Nope. Terrible. Then I noticed this plant that didn’t have anything around it and the river made the perfect background to set it off. A little fill flash lit it up and evened out the light. I quite like it and I don’t know that I’ll ever do it better, so now I can pretty much ignore this flower until there is a way to outdo myself.

Damselflies might be the exception to this rule, but again there has to be some novelty or a really good environment to show off how lovely they are. This photo captures both of those aspects – mainly because I haven’t found one at this stage with such a superb background and perch. Believe me, I got jazzed at the prospect of getting this photo. It is an immature female and she only sports that gorgeous orange for a little while. She will turn a dusty/powdery blue called pruinose when she matures, so finding her this fresh and young was a lot of fun. She is about 1 inch long. There were a few around in some grass near the driveway and because it was a cool day I could get close and wait for just the right opportunity. A little pop of flash and there she is in all her finery –

While I was out there I tried for some photos of a flower I’ve never shot well before, Meadow Anemone. It is a native wildflower and it grows all over. The trouble is, like Tall Meadow Rue, they shimmy and shake all over. So when I found a relatively short one that was in good shape in a spot with a decent background, I went in, chose focus points manually (paying special attention to the stem) and did a short stack. It was very calm with hardly any breeze, so I had a good chance of making this work. Stupidly I hadn’t moved a distraction, but Photoshop sorted that out easily.

Ok. You caught me. I have shot this species of mushroom before, but the finding was special. My oldest and dearest friend was with me and she spied them while I had the camera in a brook doing some landscape work. When I saw the set up, I knew it would make a good stack and so down I went. This time I did a few bracketing sessions and put it together later that day while we hung out in the living room (it was raining). I used 72 images to get to this very cool photo if I do say so myself.

I don’t know that I’ve ever shot Dryad’s Saddle before and they typically don’t get shown in this state so that’s why I just had to go for this shot. They look so strange and alien, but it’s totally normal. They start out tubular and folded and eventually fruit into that beautiful, smooth flat mushroom that deserves its poetic name. Google Dryad’s Saddle to see what they look like when fully mature and then compare to this odd little grouping.

Mushrooms will always call to me and this little beauty fairly sang out from the side of the trail. It’s just a single frame and since the colors didn’t really make the photo, a B&W conversion brought out the best of it –

Even my favorite places have to do something new or at least newish. Take the Prairie River. I went in May on a a cloudy day to see how things may have changed over the winter and if I could take a decent shot of a big tree that came down. I didn’t, but I came up with a couple shots that I like. First in color looking upstream –

The rock in the center is a big reason I composed this way and the light is pretty nice. Not far away, but looking downstream I didn’t like this view until I put the camera into Leica Monochrome –

It’s the curls of water that stood out a lot more in black and white and I used them as leading lines with the tripod up pretty high to get rid of as much sky in back of the trees as I could. Masking and other editing magic brought it together nicely.

The result of novelty plus good execution made it not a chore to process these and I even looked forward to it and had fun trying different things in the software. Another thing that was fun was to revisit the updated version of the TK9 panel and watch some tutorials to brush up on how to use it, something I hadn’t done in months and months.

One of the great things about being there at that time is that Marsh Marigold blooms up and down the banks. I’ve shot it before and decently, but when I saw this funny arrangement, I got in with the new macro lens and did a quick bracketing session, making shade by holding up my jacket.

The branch really makes this one distinct from other shots of this flower, or even any flower so I took the time and wasn’t overwhelmed with antipathy to process it. It isn’t a perfect stack, but I like it.

Even with wildlife I’m doing less, but when these two stopped in the backyard, I couldn’t resist. It isn’t the sharpest because I was shooting through my downstairs window, but the interaction and the direct look from the doe was great. She was absolutely aware of me, btw. Those ears miss nothing and her vision isn’t exactly lackluster either.

So yeah, White tails aren’t exactly rare, but nursing fawns…well, let’s be honest, fawns doing basically anything are just so darn cute I can’t help but pick up the camera.

Recently, a conversation on Nature Photographer’s Network about this photo, helped me further develop and expand my thinking about this approach.

Someone observed that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take and that without the constraints of film, we naturally can and do take more photos, knowing that they are easy to delete. That’s true. I remember well the cost of film – buying, developing & printing all cost money, but now with digital the cost is my time. And that’s what killing me. Not just the time it takes to review, cull and process photos after taking them, but the time in the field, too. Just the other day I spent about 1/2 an hour or so setting up and taking a bunch of photos for a stack that I knew wasn’t up to scratch. The shot was boring, I’d done it before and with the same mushrooms. I was hung up that it had been so dry that I might as well shoot what I could find rather than getting nothing.

Ugh. Wrong approach. I wasted time on something I won’t use when I could have been finding something else, which I eventually did. Hell, sitting on a rock and just listening to the birds and watching the insects flying around me would have been more enjoyable than the tedious process of taking photos I knew in my heart I probably wouldn’t use. That is the joy killer right there.

So back to our handsome dragonfly – I took this shot because the lighting was so nice and the background relatively clean. When I parked the kayak, he came right in and kept returning to this perch for several minutes. The wind is what ruffled his wings like that and I liked the shapes, so I concentrated on that aspect of him while I shot. It’s darn good and means that I may not shoot Blue Dashers again. They are everywhere this time of year and now I have several high quality images, I think I can move on to other species.

Here’s to keeping the mojo alive!