In Which a Nice Camera and a Bit of Patience Make a Patch of Weeds Look Dandy

I am constantly shocked at how the worn out adage "If at first you don't succeed, try try again" (I cringe inside just typing it) applies so well to photography.

The other day, I saw some dandelions in a field and shot a picture. Here it is in all of its poor composition, bad color, and plain old blah mediocre-ness.

Here's the same patch of weeds almost 100 pictures later.

All these pics are straight out of the camera.

In the dozens of photos before the pretty one, I fixed the composition, changed the white balance, tried both manual and auto focus, upped the ISO, and willed my self to get down on my knees in the muddy lawn to capture the soft backlight.


And about 20 more pictures later. Glorious!

Ok, well, "glorious" may be a bit of an overstatement. But, you've got to admit that it's a much better picture than photo #1.


So, if you take a picture, look at the teeny on camera screen, and give a sigh of exasperation, don't stop! Ask yourself what you don't like about the picture and fix it. Keep doing this every few shots and 100 shots later, you may have something you're proud of.