Every so often I take a photo which seems like it will be something great and amazing.  That is until I get it back home and up on my computer screen.  Then I look with dismay at what seemed like such a promising photograph.  Usually I move on and don’t return.  Sometimes, however, I come back and find that I was right about the photo but not the way I initially thought.  This is the story of one such photo that almost got away.

I had taken a trip out to Henry’s Lake in Island Park for a photo shoot.  While there, I took some time to look at my surroundings.  I noticed that there was a mountain peak which was reflecting in the morning lake.  I decided to try for one of those mountain shots where the photo is made up of the mountain itself and its reflection.  The edge of the lake divides the photo in half that way.

I had the great morning light of golden hour.  I had a rather traditional version of a mountain in front of me.  Also, I had a pristine lake reflecting the landscape around me.  In short, I had everything that felt I needed to nail the shot.  Then I looked at the photo and worked with it in color.  It didn’t work out as hoped.  I shelved the photo intending to not return like I do with most failed photos.

Then I had a rotten day.  I needed to distract myself from the distress.  The kind of distress I had to forget was not the kind of problem which would go away with a simple list of tasks.  I needed something which would be immersive and time-consuming.  In short, I needed something like processing up a photo to distract me from my problem.  So, I returned to my Henry’s Lake photos to see if there was something salvageable.

With a little bit of cropping and some serious work, I managed to turn something which had disappointed me before into something which really worked out.  It required changing the photograph into a black and white photo instead of a color photograph.

Thanks to the forest crawling up the mountain, I could emphasize plenty of texture with the monochromatic color scheme.  I was delighted to learn that this photograph, which I initially thought was going to be a winner, turned out to be the winner I originally envisioned.  It’s no longer the photo that got away.