I had a splitting headache the other night. I had the kids to deal with, dinner, dishes, bedtimes, all that stuff - but I really wanted to run outside and take a few pictures of the flowers. It's my favorite part of spring - everything is just bursting out now, and every day offers a different variety of new colors and shapes.
So after dinner and dishes but before bedtimes, I ducked outside and shot a bunch of pictures. I was most excited about the peony buds. Peonies and ants live in harmony - the ants crawling all over the buds slurping up peony nectar, I imagine. Anyway - it looks wrong, but all is right with the universe when the ants are crawling around on peony buds.
I hovered above the buds and snapped away, hoping to get an ant or two.
I came in and later uploaded what, in my mind, were a series of award-winning shots of bugs with flowers. And then I looked at them - and they looked horrible. That's it. I suck. I closed the laptop, put the camera away, put the kids to bed, took a bath, and then went to bed myself.
The next day I basically fretted on and off about my pitiful pictures. I grew up with a photographer father, and you'd think I might have at least learned how to focus properly. I am a loser, and I suck.
I emailed my sister throughout the day hollering via italics and caps "I'm a LOOSER" - and yes, it's spelled incorrectly ON PURPOSE. To emphasize my LOOSERNESS.
Well, that night I looked at them again, and surprise, surprise, they don't totally suck.
So I played around with some of them, cropping and enlarging just to see how much detail I could pull out of them.
Like this:
which then became this:
Or this:
to this:
and this:
It's fun stuff.
You can see the rest of tonight's play time here.
Moral of the story? Don't look at your new photos critically when you have a splitting headache. Wait a day.
Jayne- they're beautiful- and I truly mean it!
Posted by: Beth | May 25, 2007 at 05:15 PM