That Time I Had Trouble Finding a Bad Photo

Written by Audrey Cramer Photography
Our mission is to provide you with professional quality landscape photos and prints (matted and framed for your convenience) which keep memories of your travels alive or which enhance your marketing and feature your products/services at their best for your customers.
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I’ve been working on my photography skills for several years now.  I’m happy to say that I can consistently create a certain minimum level of quality in my work.  I needed lots of time and practice to get this far.  However, this article isn’t about my efforts to improve my photography.  It’s about this time recently when I needed a bad photo and had trouble finding one.

Cramer Imaging's fine art landscape photograph of dawn rising over magical fog the landscape of Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
I hunt and strive for the best photos I can get.  Looking for or deliberately creating a bad photo is counter intuitive for me now.

Recently, I found myself needing a bad photo to use as an illustration for another article here.  If you’re a loyal follower, you might already know which article I’m referring to.  Since I know I have a ton more photos which I don’t process up for lots of different reasons, I decided to check out the old archives on my memory cards to find an appropriately bad photo for the illustration.  That’s where this story begins.

Cramer Imaging's fine art photograph of a hot air balloon cluster taking flight in Panguitch Utah with a sunburst between 2 aerial balloons
Plenty of photos don’t make the cut when I’m culling my photos out of the camera.

I pulled out my memory card and accessed its contents on the computer.  I needed a photo which would be obviously blurry, out of focus, under-exposed, over-exposed, etc. when shrunk down for the web.  The more errors with the photo, the better for this purpose.  I checked through every single photo still on that card looking for something which would fit the bill.  That’s when I ran into a problem.

Cramer Imaging's fine art landscape photograph of the sun rising over a green and flowering potato field in Aberdeen, Idaho
Cramer Imaging’s fine art landscape photograph of the sun rising over a green and flowering potato field in Aberdeen, Idaho

I’m used to finding under-exposed photos.  I’m used to finding over-exposed photos.  However, I can usually correct those issues via Lightroom/Photoshop if not too overdone.  No, I needed something unrecoverable and I wasn’t finding anything.

Cramer Imaging's quality landscape photograph of the Palisades reservoir lake at twilight in Idaho
In the right hands, a lot of photos are recoverable given the right software assist.

I had to run to the end of the card where there were some indoor macro photos.  There’s where I found what I needed.  Thanks to the nature of macro photography, it’s so easy to get a photo out of focus.  I also had very overexposed photos.  I found one with both issues so it’s obviously unrecoverable in post-processing.  I’m glad I didn’t hit delete before.

Cramer Imaging's fine art nature macro photograph of a blooming yellow desert flower in Bryce Canyon National Park Utah
Macro photography has such a narrow plane of focus that I could move just a tiny bit and this photo would be totally out of focus.

While this story is rather unremarkable in itself, it does tell me something about what kind of photographer I’ve become lately.  I’ve started to consistently create photos which are in focus (regardless of lighting conditions).  It’s one of those self-discovery of skill moments which made me proud but also created a bit of a problem when I needed something deliberately bad to work with.

Cramer Imaging's fine art landscape photograph of Kolob Canyon's finger canyons in winter in Zion National Park, Utah at sunset
Occasionally, it’s good to look over your shoulder and see just how far you’ve come.

Thought you all might like to hear about this little moment for me as a photographer.  It sure surprised me.  Have you ever had a moment like this?  Share what happened in the comments below.