Perthpective

Posted on December 30, 2010
by Karen Fayeth
1 Comment

What’s that old platitude, something like “you’re not the best judge of your own work?”

The more I give over to my creative side, I keep learning that lesson over and over. I think I have a good eye for editing my own work, and of course I’m usually wrong.

I’ve also learned that the best way to really see something objectively is to give it time.

Time is the great mediator.

(wow, I’m chock full to brimming with platitudes today!)

Anyhow, I got to thinking about this recently while sorting through my iPhoto library. As an amateur photographer, I take *a lot* of photographs. This is the advice of my friend, mentor and teacher, Marty Springer, so I follow her advice.

But this means my iPhoto library fills up fast with fair to middling to downright awful shots. Since all of this dreck was slowing down my iMac, I decided to save the photos elsewhere and start again.

Oh, and also…my New Year’s resolution is to get better about tagging all of my photos as I download them so I can search more quickly.

So in cleaning out my old photos, sifting through the pile, I came across the shot at the end of this post.

The Feline had climbed into the laundry basket that was lying on the ground, so I grabbed my camera and took a few snaps. I considered them throwaway photos. Less than throwaway. I downloaded them to my iMac and never looked back.

But something about this photo…it really works. It was taken probably two or more years ago when I was just learning my camera and had no idea about depth of field. And yet, the depth of field is what makes this photo interesting. It’s not a perfect photo but it’s also not bad. A little imperfect Photoshop adjustments and I’ll be damned…not too bad at all.

Because not only with time comes perspective, but also…I can learn some lessons from three years ago me. The one just learning about photography. The one who just snapped and didn’t think.

A careless shot can be magic.

I guess that’s why my photography teacher tells us never to delete photos. “You never know” she says.