{"id":1610,"date":"2016-01-26T10:26:43","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T17:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/?p=1610"},"modified":"2016-01-26T10:26:43","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T17:26:43","slug":"01-26-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/2016\/01\/01-26-16\/","title":{"rendered":"01-26-16"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"710_3561_365_012516\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Day 26 \/ 391 –<\/p>\n

This is a bad photo.<\/p>\n

Strange, right? \u00a0That I would post a bad photo, but here it is, a bad photo. \u00a0Not one I’m proud of. \u00a0And you might be saying, that isn’t so bad. \u00a0It has some interesting things to look at, it has some contrast, etc. \u00a0But really, it is a bad photo.<\/p>\n

I want to talk about what makes it bad. \u00a0The reason it’s bad is because there is too much going on to clearly say why I took this picture, why I stopped here and wanted to snap this. \u00a0Too busy. \u00a0Cluttered.<\/p>\n

Can you see the reason I took this picture in the first place? \u00a0Take a look at the roof. \u00a0Did you see it before I pointed it out? \u00a0Does anything in the photo lead you there, or make it stand out? \u00a0Maybe your eyes went to the trees first. \u00a0Or you looked at the walls of the house rather than the roof. \u00a0I’m the one who made\u00a0the photo and I don’t look at the roof, which was\u00a0the whole point of the photo when I shot it.<\/p>\n

Black and white is an interesting beast. \u00a0It forces you to clarify what you are doing. \u00a0It makes you think about what you put in the image and what you leave out. \u00a0You are better off leaving out things, rather than adding more. \u00a0You do this by moving around, reframing, making compositional choices.<\/p>\n

With color photography, it’s easy to enjoy the colors without really seeing what the image is actually of. \u00a0Yesterday’s shot<\/a> is a good example. \u00a0The warm colors can be a contrast to the parts of the shack that are falling down, but they can distract. \u00a0 Another might be this<\/a>. \u00a0The colors are pretty, and the building is amazing. \u00a0I really love this shot, but what are we really looking at? \u00a0The colors? \u00a0The sky? \u00a0There is nothing wrong with making an image that is colorful and vibrant. \u00a0I just prefer that those images convey what I was feeling about what I was seeing. \u00a0I think the building does that better than the shack from yesterday, but they can both get pulled down by the brilliance of the colors.<\/p>\n

For today’s\u00a0shot, I might be able to come back at a different time of day and get more light on the roof, taking away from the shadows\u00a0of the tree behind it. \u00a0Since it’s\u00a0winter and the tree is to the south, I probably would need to be here in the summer. \u00a0That isn’t going to happen. \u00a0Maybe the right filter, or right effects. \u00a0I don’t know yet.<\/p>\n

It’s good to take stinkers of photos sometimes. \u00a0If you dig in to what doesn’t work about a bad image, you can figure out what you can do better next time. \u00a0You might look at a potential photo and decide to move on, saving you an hour of trying to make something work that simply won’t. \u00a0Perhaps in the hands of someone else more skilled, they could pull out what I was going for. \u00a0I might work on this photo more to see what comes of it. \u00a0Trying to pull wine from a stone can sometimes lead to interesting new techniques and skills.<\/p>\n

But I wanted to put this up to say that things don’t always work out. \u00a0Sometimes, the most interesting view of a falling down house doesn’t compare to the simplicity of a cow looking off in the distance. \u00a0Knowing why that is the case helps tremendously.<\/p>\n

Bad photos can be more useful than good ones sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 26 \/ 391 – This is a bad photo. Strange, right? \u00a0That I would post a bad photo, but here it is, a bad photo. \u00a0Not one I’m proud of. \u00a0And you might be saying, that isn’t so bad. \u00a0It has some interesting things to look at, it has some contrast, etc. \u00a0But really, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[2,145,9,146],"class_list":["post-1610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-118","tag-2","tag-bad-photo","tag-fl","tag-wimauma","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesgralian.com\/365\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}