The Dragonfly
Behind the Photograph
Sometimes the photograph isn't finished when the shutter
clicks.
There are days when you head out with a plan...
...and nature politely ignores it.
Nada and I had driven to a little marina in St. Somewhere,
hoping for wildlife photographs or maybe a few interesting boats making their
way in and out of the harbor.
Neither one showed up.
That happens more often than you'd think.
Fortunately, photographers don't have to settle for
disappointment.
We simply start looking somewhere else.
That's when I noticed the palm trees.
Standing together, they had a rhythm I hadn't appreciated at
first.
Individually they were just palm trees.
Together they became a pattern against the sky.
I took the shot.
Later, as I looked at it on my computer, I realized it
wasn't quite finished.
Not because the composition was wrong.
Not because the exposure was off.
Because it didn't yet look the way that afternoon had felt.
This is where photography becomes art.
Some photographers believe the work ends when the shutter
closes.
I've never looked at it that way.
The camera records light.
The artist finishes the story.
I experimented with a leather texture overlay, not knowing
exactly what would happen.
What surprised me wasn't the texture.
It was the way it transformed the entire mood of the image.
The palm trees seemed to come alive, becoming brighter and
more dimensional, while the sky took on a character I still have trouble
describing.
It didn't make the photograph less honest.
It made it more truthful.
Not to what the camera recorded...
...but to what I experienced standing there that afternoon.
I've often said that I want my photographs to show what I
saw, not just what the camera saw.
Sometimes that means using every artistic tool available to
bridge the gap between what I remember and what the camera recorded.
For me, editing isn't about changing reality.
It's about revealing it.
Photographer's Notes
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