My initial edit of Integrity.

So sometimes I am working on a photo and I end up working on it for so long that my impatience takes over. I take it to a point where I think the photo is good enough (never good words for an artist to say), then save it, publish it on various social media outlets, and then consider my business wrestling with the image finished. Then a week later I look back at it and wished I hadn't walked away from it just yet. This is one of those photos. That darned mist took so long that by the time I actually got around to making color and lighting adjustments and putting on the finishing touches, I was more than done. It probably didn't help that I had finished adding all the mist, and then photoshop crashed before I saved the image and I had to start over again from the beginning. Needless to say, I was done with the photo. So I did a few tweaks and called it "as good as it's going to get."

My patience having had it's way, I sat looking at the image over and over on my blog, and on facebook, and on instagram. The more I looked at it, the more I didn't like it. This is not how it's supposed to be. Generally when I create a piece I truly am happy with, I find myself wanting to stare at it as often as I can. Not so with this one. I even deleted it from my instagram, I became so unhappy with it.

There was something missing... something not right about the photo. So I turned to my cousin, a photoshop guru in his own right (who I would totally credit on here if he kept up a blog, or instagram, or ANY type of social media. But he doesn't, so sorry Stephen. This will have to do!) and asked what he thought of the photo. I explained to him that I didn't like the green fog, it was too obviously "evil" and I wasn't going for the look of "HEY!!! LOOK AT ME!!! I'M BAD AND I'M TRYING TO MAKE THIS GIRL NOT HAVE INTEGRITY!! ARGH!!!"
I wanted something subtler. Something cunning. So it needed to be a little less.... there.

I also hated that the light sky was such a huge distraction in the background. In my head, I had envisioned a girl in a dark forest, making her way down a path that was being encroached upon by the fog. She would be the light in the image, the character of good and integrity in a forest of darkness. I just wasn't getting that the way my image was. Although it was winter, which made the forest look a little bit more sad and depressing, it was still a fairly bright scene. Not at all what I wanted. 

So Stephen showed me how to darken the sky and to really draw the attention in to her, and not to the fog. And it's SO MUCH better! 

Hopefully I've learned my lesson and won't resort to hastily doing some editing and calling it "done" even though I don't like it. Sometimes we just need to walk away for a while, and sometimes we need to look outside for help. This doesn't make you a horrible artist. It makes you a person who's willing to learn new things. And that's far more important than being perfect.

My final edit of Integrity.

Can I just BE Elizabeth Gadd?! I just had to share this lovely photographer, whose every image practically sends me racing to my camera with bursts of sudden inspiration. Hopefully you will love her work just as much as I do!

If you want to see more, you can find her here:

https://www.facebook.com/elizabethgaddphotography?fref=ts

or here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabethgadd/

or here:

instagram: @elizabethgadd

(All photographs copyrighted by Elizabeth Gadd. Please do not use without giving proper credit!)