Saturday, September 17, 2011

Shooting a lady of the night


Waiting
Quebec City, QC, July 2011
About this photo: Thematic. Playing with light. You. Here. Because you want to.
Every time I look at this picture, I think about what it isn't. Namely, focus, composition and lighting are all, to be charitable, off. Way off. In a past life, I probably would have deleted it from the set and forgotten about it.

But every time I saw it, my finger hovered over the delete button but didn't actually press it. There's something in this moment, captured almost reflexively as I walked down a busy Quebec City street, that makes me wonder who she was, what she was doing there and what happened to her after I continued on my way. Was she a regular

Lesson learned: Even the technical failures (like this one) have some kind of redeeming value.

Your turn: Do you hold onto so-called failed photos?

8 comments:

Kalei's Best Friend said...

Is there such a thing as a failed photo? Kinda like 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'.... what you may think is distorted ( lady of the night) I find interesting... besides that could be someone's mama or your boss! lol

Pearl said...

glad you kept it. it's appealing. focus isn't always the key thing.

Max Sartin said...

It's still a good picture, you still caught the moment and the feeling of it. As for saving 'failed' photos, yes I do. I rarely, if ever, delete photos, which is why I've used 81.9% of my 500 GB photo hard drive.

Dawn said...

It's hard for me to delete anything...but I've been harder on myself and delete about 75% of what I take now. But.. then I regret pushing delete after I do so on most things. It WAS still meaningful to me in some way, and deleting it makes me sad in one way or other for the capture now gone.

I wonder what happened to her too...so many stories out there.

Pamela said...

the color is fantastic. and there is something about it that kind of calls to me

Cloudia said...

wise finger that knows when NOT to delete!


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Alexia said...

the blurred feeling enhances my speculations about her...

Carmi - your Pearl tower shots are great - especially the moon one. Mine are ordinary stereotypical tourist pics :)
I hate heights but going up there at night helped.

rashbre said...

reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting. Kind of around the corner from Nighthawks.