Bear Head Lake, Minnesota
I admit, this photo was made with some quick instructions shouted across the water. I told Joan to paddle very slowly in front of the tamarack tree, that was for a brief moment perfectly illuminated by the sun. It could have been a great fall shot with its color contrast between the beautiful tamarack and the blue kayak, and as the ice on the cake a nice reflection on the water, if… Yes, if there wasn’t the dead trees in the picture. To be honest I didn’t even see them until I was back home and viewed the pictures on screen. Sure, I can invest another hour and remove all the dead wood from the photo. Photoshop and other software gives us endless possibilities to tinker with an image. But is it worth the time? I clean up a landscape picture if necessary, especially around the edges (called “border police” by other photographers), but I rather go out and shoot again instead of removing a bigger flaw in post process. Every photographer has to make their own decisions about how much time to spend for fixing a problem. Unless I try a new technique in post process I hardly ever exceed ten minutes for working with a RAW file and bring out the romance in the photo. Life is too short and the world doesn’t come to an end if a photo doesn’t get published…