Woodland Farm and Valley Oak

 Or...My 2013 New Year's Resolution

This photo was taken almost exactly a year ago.  I was browsing through my "seconds" folder yesterday and happened upon it.  I remember liking it a lot, but really objecting to that crooked telephone pole in the distance.  I remember returning to the scene to recreate the photo from a slightly different angle without the pole, and of course the light was never the same.  First off, today I happen to really like that pole.  But the other thing I realized when I was thinking about all the trouble I went through with this photo is that at this time last year I didn't know how to clone a little telephone pole out of a photo using Photoshop, and this is something I could easily do today.  This just seems crazy to me now.  And the fact is, I barely know Photoshop.

This really hit home for me yesterday too, because I had one of my favorite new photos printed at Blue Wing Art Gallery in Woodland.  (And I would highly recommend them for printing if you live in the Sacramento area!)  Al at Blue Wing corrected some of the issues with my photo.  On the one hand they were sort of minor, but on the other hand, they weren't easy fixes in Photoshop at all.  I was really in awe of this, and I know it's a little early for New Year's Resolutions, but I'm going to put some serious time into really learning Photoshop in 2013.

For me, Photoshop is a little like the old Rumsfeldian quandary in Iraq.  With Photoshop, there are the "known knowns", the "known unknowns", and then there are the "unknown unknowns" of which I'm becoming vaguely aware.  My goal is to use a less heavy-handed approach to processing photos in 2013.  I'm not super excited about the work.  I would much rather be out shooting photos with my camera than sitting at the computer and working on photos.  But I'm excited about the possible outcome.