I am sure you have experienced it. A fantastic journey, beautiful views and many warm feelings. Pictures everywhere. The compositions never ends. Maybe the ultimate photo experience.

Then you get home and load the pictures in to your computer. Suddenly the feelings are all gone. The shots are flat, the horizon is slanted and the compositions are terrible. What happened with the photos in the camera as you went home…??

I experienced exactly this yesterday after a great day in the most southern part of Sweden (Österlen). The sky was dramatic, the wawes were high and the wind was blowing hard. I shot at least 50 pictures during the day (I try and be careful not to just burst away…) and was quite happy with them as I looked in the cameras small display. Yet as I watched them in Lightroom I was not that impressed.

I believe that my problem is that I let the feelings take over a little too much. That leads me to ignore the composition in the picture and just press the trigger – as if the feelings will balance the loss of composition. Unfortenatly this doesn’t work. The result is a flat picture that may have some beauty – but not at all the feelings that I had as I pushed the trigger on the camera.

What can I do about it? Well – I am not sure, but I have some ideas that I try to live after (but the apparently don’t always work very well…).

I try and think about what I am going to shoot during the day, pick as little equipment as possible and then leave the rest at home. I often choose a prime lens (50mm or below) to limit my options. That way I try and force myself to be more active as I compose the picture. If I use a zoom lens I found that I stand on one spot and try to compose with the zoom instead of moving around. That may work for some people – but I don’t like to shoot that way. Been there, done that.

Then there is of course the afterwork. Some feelings can be added in the editing process. A good thing can be to edit the pictures close to when they were shot – when the feelings are still fresh.