Thru My lens: Don't drop less appealing photos, make them POP!

As one who doesn't even throw away the little resealable containers you get when you buy lunch meats at the store, I tend to find ways to preserve my less than perfect photography as well. What do I mean by less than perfect or less than acceptable? Those slightly less pretty or more out of focus shots that you capture as you're calibrating your camera for a particular scene, trying to adjust for lighting or even still trying to learn your way around your new camera. I call these 'Trial and Error' photographs. Even some of the most seasoned photographers have these because no one is perfect and nor are the subjects that we shoot.

My point is that those shots you spent so much time trying to capture don't have to go to waste, so long as you have some sort of imaging software. Those pictures don't have to be complete garbage. Even if most of the shot is ruined beyond compare but the subject of the shot is of great quality, you could clip the subject out of the image and crop it someplace else all together. I call this getting creative with photographs.

I believe that anyone who has sheer passion for art, life and taking photos- even for sport or as a hobby- could learn to love doing this. It is a wonderful form of self-expression and it brings new life to something that you may have potentially thought was dead (speaking about the photo of course). Best thing is, you don't have to use only your 'trial and error' photos... you can digital recreate and manipulate to your hearts' content.

Here is an example with both before and after images. The one on the left is of a 'trial and error' photograph of a Blue Jay that I took. The image came out less focused than I would have liked. I decided that instead of tossing the image, I would digitally manipulate it using some filters from my extremely ancient version of Photoshop Elements (that would be the image on the right).