In pursuit of excellence

No mist this morning, but wind and rain discouraged any outings. I got up late after breakfast in bed, and finished off my blog entry about apple pie. Then I made my third attempt at taking a photo for it. For a food blogger, I'm really not very good at taking photos of food. This was the best I could manage, with an increasingly tired-looking pie :)

In the afternoon the sun came out, so I went for a short blipstroll. More photos of vines. I was thinking about Arachne's post on her criteria for evaluating photos:
1 - aesthetic appeal
2 - technique
3 - "message" ("emotion" for me -- if a photo doesn't make me feel something, it's not a successful photo)

I spent 10 minutes tinkering with a vine photo. The Snapseed drama filter may have been used. But in the end, no matter how much processing you do on a photo, if it was a boring, badly composed photo in the first place it can't be rescued just by applying a few filters. Into the bin it went. Which is why you've got a not-that-great photo of apple pie :)

For me, no amount of technical expertise can rescue a photo that doesn't speak to me, aesthetically or emotionally. You can have the latest and greatest kit, spend hours in Photoshop, and produce photos that are sterile and without meaning. Or, you can use a compact on automatic, claim to know nothing about photography, and produce incredibly powerful photos. I remain somewhere between those extremes, but I would rather approach the second than the first!

On which topic, I'm reckoning on repeating last year's photography course experience this year, probably in June. Anyone care to join me?