That Colorful Fuchsia: Sometimes the Original Version is the Best!

reddragonfly (64)in #photography • 5 years ago

Whereas I love messing around with photography and effects, things don't always turn out as I might like.

Having grown up with film photography (yes, I'm old!) experimentation was pretty much limited by my (very limited) budget for film and processing. Here in the digital age, we can experiment endlessly, at little cost but some time and sweat equity.

These brilliantly bright fuchsias grow in a large bush by our front entrance. Yes, I know this a "greenhouse plant" in many parts of the world... around here, we stick 'em in the ground, and they grow.

And yes, that's really their natural color.

Turning them into a black-and-white is actually sort of boring:

Whereas I do like black-and-white images, I do not subscribe to the artistic school of thought that the moment it is black-and-white, it's suddenly ART.

No. No it isn't. There's a whole separate ART to effective black-and-white photography that's far beyond the scope of this limited post.

In this case, the B&W is pretty much a "meh" outcome.

So maybe we can make it a little bit more artistic by applying some art filters:

Whereas this "heat haze" filter might be visually interesting on some level, I don't like the fact that I couldn't get it to "look like anything" and still keep the vibrant fresh colors of the original photo.

So here, the original wins again.

With a totally different art filter:

This more of a stained glass/graffiti look, and while it's certainly interesting, it actually becomes hard to tell what we started out with. Maybe I'm just too much of a realist in this context, but I am back to liking the original version the best.

So what was really the point of this little creative exercise?

Mostly that it's easy to overdo things, in the name of "creativity." Not every benefits from being seen with a new approach, and not everything needs to be improved in order for it to be worthy.

One of the other things I have noticed about growing up in "the age of film," is that I tend to spend more looking at things before I "pull the trigger" on the camera... and that has become particularly evident to me when I'm out and about with my 20-something kids who come home from a hike with hundreds of shots (and video clips) taken with their smartphones, while I might have 50 or so shots on my camera memory card.

Anyway, just remember that if you "got it right" in the first place, you don't really need to overprocess a photo!

Thanks for reading!