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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.