Is This Photo Better For Its Flaw?
The only proof that I was really there…
A few years ago I did a road trip around the Pacific Northwest. One of the cities that I visited on that trip was Victoria, which is on the southern coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. This is where I took the above photograph.
When I got back to my hotel at the end of that day and looked through the photos I had taken, I remember feeling disappointed and frustrated. Why had I not noticed my stupid shadow when I was taking the picture? I should have known better than to take a photo with the sun behind me, and low in the sky; I should have positioned myself better.
The photo — and a couple of other near-duplicates — was unusable, I figured. I thought about deleting them, but ultimately didn’t; I’m not sure why. Maybe I was just tired that evening, or maybe I still hoped that I might be able to edit them so the shadow was less visible.
Whatever the reason, though, I’m really glad now that I didn’t. Because from that whole trip, those photos are the only ones that offer any proof that I was there. I have hundreds of landscapes — some of them quite nice, if I do say so myself — but no pictures of me. They’re far better photographs, from a compositional perspective, but they’re also slightly impersonal.
