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Post Processing and Sunflower Petals

Post processing photographs is synonymous with a master cook using salt in a gourmet dish. You need it as part of your workflow to help achieve your vision and more importantly, to grow as a photographer and artist.

I’m not just talking about modifying saturation, color balance, or contrast. I’m not even suggesting that you need to churn your photos through a HDR processor every single time. What I am suggesting, though, is to scrutinize your composition.

Crop That Photo Till You Drop

Chop it up, change the aspect ratio, and make sure you come away with at least five different variations of your original photograph. By completing this exercise, you will gain an understanding of how to approach your subjects from newly appreciated angles. You will also begin to possess a deeper creative mindset and that my friends, is the point I want to drive home.

The more you do in post with composition, the more you will develop your creative mind.

Sunflower Petals

I was digging through my photo library and wanted to find a photo that lacked focus and punch; I came across a photo series from last year of a Sunflower maze and knew this was the album to search. I remember feeling a bit disappointed with the outcome of this shoot.

Ah, always revisit your photos… you might surprise yourself. Speaking of surprising myself, I followed my own advice on post processing and chopped up the composition till I found a new angle that really added focus and depth. Intuition kicked in and I came away with a crop that I know I’ll be using for new work.

A sunflower is a sunflower is a sunflower until you chop off three quarters of the sunflower petals and let your viewer use his or her imagination to fill in the blanks. I did exactly that with the crop I’m sharing with you today.

A quarter of a sunflower fans out its petals from the bottom left of the frame while the rest of the scene blurs into beautiful yellow and green bokeh.

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