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Dumpster Diving

Friday, February 18th, 2011

/dump’-ster di:’-ving/ -n 1. The practice of searching through dumpsters for discarded, but still usable, goods such as food or clothes.  2.  The practice of searching through one’s hard drive for RAW files that have not been processed before.

Its raining today, and I’ve got a 3-year-old in tow.  Definitely not a day that’s conducive to be outside for serious photography.  We’ve all been in this position before, when we’re dying to get out, but life just seems to get in the way.  What to do?  One thing I like to do is “dumpster dive”–go through my hard drive and revisit images that did not quite seem to make the cut before.

There are multiple reasons to dig through the rubbish of past shoots.  Perhaps your post-processing skills have improved since you captured the RAW file, or you have new inspiration of how to process the image.  Or simply, your tastes have changed, and something that didn’t appeal before is suddenly more attractive.

I processed this image a while ago, from a visit to the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve in December.  I loved the scene of sun peeking out from behind this oak tree, but never could quite get the processing right.  After coming back to the image a couple of months later, I was able to shed some new light on the processing problem.  Now, its one of my favorites from this lovely wilderness area.

Do you have images that benefitted from an initial cast-off and subsequent revisiting?  Please share links in the comments section!

Oak tree and sunburst at the Santa Rosa Plateau ecological reserve near temecula california

Sunburst, December 2010