What you do when your pics don't come out as you hoped

[robklurfield]

shoot more

 

[Thardy]

This is one I regarded as a throw away but a few weeks on, after giving it a bit of thought and with a bit of cropping and other work on the tone and saturation, now I like it.

And this one too

And this one too - here the cropping made all the difference although I also had to do a lot of work to take the attention off the people in the background and focus on the main subject. I did that through tonal adjustment and blurring.

That's the "problem" with digital. Too easy to just throwaway photos that on second inspection are really good.

 

[uhligfd]

When you fall off the horse, you should immediately (once the triage person has reset your bones, of course) get back on.

And if you give yourself impossible deadlines such as two more exhibition prints by Sunday, you set yourself up to fail.

So get back on your horse and look for competitions that are 3 months away.

 

[allen_a_george]

Try to articulate the mistakes, and try again

Try to articulate the mistakes, and try again

I try to articulate what went wrong, figure out a specific way to address it, and then try again.

I used to try and save photos that were almost there, but I don't bother now - unless it's really, really, worth it. It might help to create a top 3 list of problems and figure out specific ways to tackle them. Mine are:

1. Boring
2. Bad exposure
3. Composition was weirdly off

If you know what the problem(s) are, it's much easier to tackle them.

 

[antiquark]

document what went wrong, then look for patterns to fix it...

Try to articulate the mistakes, and try again

What those guys said!

You mentioned that some of your pics were bad because of dull light. That's an example of something that you remember for your future photography. Next time you're going to take a pic, ask yourself "is this dull light?" If it is, then don't take the pic. Or better yet, compose the picture in such a way that the dull light doesn't have a negative impact.

I find that NOT taking pictures is a good way to improve quality. (Percentage-wise, that is.) Taking dozens and dozens of pictures of a subject (or in the case of digital, thousands and thousands) doesn't do much to improve quality. My thinking is, if the picture works, it works. If it doesn't, you won't make it work by taking 100 shots.

It also improves the morale. Instead of wading through 1000 crappy pictures,you only have to look at, say, ten.

 

[back alley]

for film - blame the lab or the scanner

for digital - blame the software

 

[jedrek]

Put it back (on the drive or into the sleeves) and go out take more pictures. What I don't do is sit around trying to polish a turd. I used to, but going out and shooting is just so much more fun.

 

[johannielscom]

Actually, I start out with dull negatives quite often but I'm scanning my film, I have a lot of opportunity to increase contrast, crop, saturate, de-saturate, etc.

While I'm still striving to increase my the quality of my negatives, I can at least use shots that are well composed and in focus 90 percent of the time. Only when heavily under-exposed or with blown-out highlights, I have to thrash the shot.

So, you might consider buying a film scanner and improving your shots the digital way.