How I edit

Some people have been wondering how and why I edit pictures. There are a couple reasons for this. For one thing, I am a bad photographer. I've never taken a photography class, and no one has ever taught me anything. I only started when, two summers ago, I was asked to make a photographic guidebook to wildflowers. Thus, I got pretty good at taking pictures of things that don't move, and the kind of pictures I took were mostly informative and not really artistic.

This is a picture I took of a group of students, probably high school, in front of a wall painted with the name of the FMLN, the main left-wing party. It's a pretty decent picture, but it was hard to take because it was taken from a moving vehicle (and my camera isn't very good when it comes to photographing moving things). As a result, it comes out a bit blurry.

When editing or enhancing pictures, I think about what it is I want to enhance. One of the things I really loved about El Salvador is that, while some people who saw me would give the "Oh, it those Americans" look or simply ignore us, there were random bouts of extreme friendliness, and this was one of them. The sign in the background accents the presence of the kids, but it's not really the subject of the picture. This is how I edited it:
In contrast, here's a different presentation for the same picture. This one has a really dark and ominous tone to it. You can't see the faces really well, which makes it look even more creepy and emphasizes the presence of the figures, but not necessarily their identities.

To end this on a happy tone, here is cheerful picture of a flower that I can't fit anywhere else.

As someone who started out documenting and photographing flowers, I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get much of a chance to see the nature and that we went there during the dry season. All the more reason to come back in the future.