Kodachrome … Nice Bright Colors

You ever stepped off a cruise ship at some Alaskan port and
into a shop that had rows and rows of little 2 inch Eskimo carvings?
There are rows and rows because people buy them. They are buying
them to capture those intense memories that nothing can capture.

I returned home from a trip to Utah’s Zion and Bryce National Parks
during my wife’s 2013 spring break. I immediately loaded 1500 plus
raw photos into Lightroom and started looking through them. My
first reaction. These just don’t do it. They miss the mark. They don’t
do justice to the parks. What a disappointment.

Then something very interesting happened. With each passing day,
as those vivid memories of vivid colors started to fade, my photos
started to come alive, with color and a bit more grandeur. Granted
I had to go after them a bit in Lightroom. I had never before been
party to such a quick and stark change in attitude. Okay, in terms of
my photography.

I also realize that, for me, each click of the shutter is a little 2 inch Eskimo
carving. And in realizing that, it became clear that as the intensity of the
experience fades, so does my ability to say if a photo really does capture
what I’ve seen. Clearly in today’s world, you can’t process all of the 900
shots you captured today. However, you can work with a small subset of
photos that represent the variety of pictures that you’ve just taken.

Even better, process those few before going to the next site. Our memories
play wonderful tricks on us [ love for example ], blending the best of several
memories. But with photos to capture experiences, it might be better to deal
with each batch before the influences of the next set result in cross saturation
of the “memoric” scenes.

I love nice bright colors.

-neil

Neil Toda @ nttoda DASH sfc AT yahoo DOT com

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