When asked how I go about editing a photograph, it usually starts with a version in my head long before I ever push a shutter button; many of the photographs on my website HogbatsPhotography.com I usually "see" in my mind before my computer ever does.  Some of the pictures exist in my little head years before I can even snap a photo.  This is what's called prevision, meaning foresight; it's from the french and means to foresee.  You do this yourself when you look at your bedroom and imagine it in pink with lace curtains (oh, I hope not!).

    Some of the photos in my head I know I can never actually make, like the image in my mind I've had for years of an African Bee-eater hovering by it's cliff side nest; Masai Mara Game Preserve might as well be on the Moon.  But Eagle photographs exist in my head just waiting for the right bird to cooperate; assuming one ever comes up to me and starts to tell me of his trip to Wyoming.  Yet some just come to my camera in a flash of excitement and luck, like the photo of the Grand Teton in this week's blog.

     We were up near the Tetons photographing Osprey for the sheer pleasure of being there, when I turned around with the long lens in my hand and saw the Grand Teton peak in the far distance.  When I hit the peak with my camera I saw something unusual; this pine tree was right in front of this most famous mountain peak.  It was unusual and pretty in a unique kind of way, and a fun way of seeing this beautiful mountain-top, yet the tree was some thirty miles away from the mountain!  The image filled the sensor and I took only two frames, then moved on to what I was doing.  When we got home and I uploaded the files, I saw the Tetons in a way I hadn't imagined at all.  

     I worked the RAW file first in the Canon supplied software Digital Photo Professional, then as I usually do I worked it in Adobe Lightroom to touch up sharpness and some color issues I had with that pine in the foreground.  I had it finished but didn't like it much, my wife loved it and couldn't figure out why I wouldn't use it.  She mentioned the image of the Grand Teton the other day, and when I revisited the file I knew what it really needed.  

     I've been experimenting with black and white a little lately, and found the old way of seeing that Grandpa used in his darkroom worked just right for this photo.  I tweaked the image to make it more of a "classic" b&w by adding a vignette, and there you have it; and all it took was over five hundred miles and months of waiting for me to see the photograph the way it needed to be.  The color version is pretty, no doubt about that, but the black and white made a statement with this mountain.  Was I right? Was I wrong?  Does it matter?  

     My point is something I've touched on before; "Make the image yours."  Have enough guts to make the picture something that is truly your own.  Go for it....experiment, and see what it looks like this way or that.  There really is no "right" way of making a photograph, just the knowledge of your software and the motivation to make the image your own; others may not like what you've done with a photo....everyone's a critic.  The greatest photographers and artists always have their own "style" of seeing.  Like it or not, those blue people in Pablo's paintings are his and definitely not mine; could they be yours?

all writing and photography by Michael John Balog