On Cow Families and Perfection

A little while ago I posted some shots from my recent visit to a farm. You can see those pictures here, if you haven't already viewed them.

This morning I wanted to quickly post a couple more shots of those cows, even though I still don't have the ones I wanted to post ready.

I have been reflecting a lot about the issue of perfectionism. The Nester writes about this concept often. You see, I really didn't want to post these particular photos. I don't take pictures to simply capture what  anyone can see. It's just not my style. So when a shot is a little out of focus, or the lighting is bad, or most of the better ones are of the cows' backsides as they ran away from me, I'd really rather not post them at all. I prefer to ignore what is not perfect, when it comes to my creative side (or house-cleaning, I suppose).

But I have noticed since I am not blogging regularly (the way I used to) that the files sit on my hard drive or on my disk untouched. I don't look back through them more than once and I certainly don't bother to edit them. This is a shame considering that photo editing, like most everything else, requires practice. I need to continue pushing and experimenting in order to improve.

So even though, these are not great, here they are. And there will be one more post to come. I just couldn't get it all done this morning. Those of you who blog can probably imagine how long I have been sitting here just to get these up....meanwhile the dust bunnies have begun a war under the sofa and I am just sure the dirty laundry pile has somehow multiplied.

***

Here is an example of a shot I was unhappy with. Those cows simply would not turn into the proper light. With my limited equipment and skill, the shot turned out less than perfect, but I still loved the way the Momma  and the Baby were right by each other...sort of like a "family photo". So I tinkered with the contract and gave this one a little drama. At the very end I added a "cinema strip" (I think) on picmomkey. Have you been to Pickmonkey yet? Go. You will love it. (even if you have Photoshop, like I do, it is a fun place to play!)

Here's another sweet little family shot that I called "Party of Five".

Here's a little shot of two of the sweet babies just hanging out. Not great photography, perhaps, but they still are awfully cute!

Note: I had a heck of a time getting the faces of the "pure" white ones to focus well. I tried adjusting the aperture...and every other thing I could, but I still didn't get the clarity I wanted. There must be a trick to this...



Here is the last one for today. Another little "family shot". I think the color on this was a little funky. I perked up the green grass (which was mostly brown then) and tried to make the colors pop a bit. I'd love to retake this one with better lighting and green grass, because I ended up loving the colors in the background.

If I were going to print this, I'd go back to my great big Photoshop file, because I noticed that I lost even more clarity when I compressed these for blog posting. I have been hearing so much about piracy, that I have gotten a little anxious about posting bigger files. 

As it is, I can't imagine someone wanting to steal my semi-focused cows! 

:)

Well, that's it for today. Have a great week!