How to see

I’ve been crabbing for some time about the struggle with editing photos. What looks good to me on screen sometimes does not look as good when printed. Yes, I know the type of printer and paper makes a difference. I’ve pretty much got a handle on the three printers at the house, but now the issue is if I send the image to be printed as a gallery wrap, metal print, or in a book. 

There are times when I’m saving the image two or three times depending on where and how it will be printed. The toughest decision is figuring out how much to tweak an image. Too much and the colors could look garish and often, if I add contrast to make items in the picture pop, the sky lightens too much and the dynamics of clouds disappear. And I love clouds. 

I also doubt my eyesight. Is what I see on the computer really a good picture or is my eyesight causing me to make poor editing decisions? The self doubt creates added issues and holds up the process of working faster and printing poor quality pictures is a huge waste of expensive paper and ink (let alone the waste of time).  

This morning I worked on editing more Day 3 photos of my trip. I took a lot of traveling photos that day, plus I visited the Virginia Museum of Civil War in New Market. There are still pictures to edit and I’ve already edited over 24. Virginia is a beautiful state and at that point, I was just doing a drive-through. 

I’m still trying to decide how to best show these pictures. I never got around to doing a book of all the 2013 trip pictures. That was a huge let down for myself because some of those images are amazing. I’d still like to do a photo book of them and even toyed with the idea of doing both trips in one book. However, there are too many pictures.  

How do I decide which to print? Some might not be the greatest shots, but to show, in pictures, what the journey was like is important, especially for those who never get a chance to travel. Book publishing/printing is made to sound so easy now-a-days, but it’s expensive. It’s one thing if you are just purchasing a single book or a couple of copies to give to the family, but to try to do something to sell and have an affordable price on the book is near impossible.  

But I want to do this! I not only want to tell my story in a travel book, I also want to have picture books. Big goals for 2015.