I’ve been looking through Sebastião Salgado’s Genesis, which has a section on the Galapagos. Kelly and I were fortunate to visit the Galapagos more than twenty years ago, in 2005. I thought it might be interesting to review those old photos, with two contradictory hopes. First, that I’ve actually learned something about photography in the past two decades. But second, that the photos aren’t as bad as I feared.

Well, I’ve definitely learned some things about photography. So many of these photos are center-shot closeups, or generic kinda sorta landscapes, or sometimes “I wonder what I was shooting at”. One thing I see here, though, is that sometimes the subject matter is so unique or spectacular that it’s very hard to take a truly bad shot. Certainly better shots were available, but I often ended up with “good enough” in spite of myself.

I had hoped this post would include numerous examples of what I could have done better or even the occasional shot that I could improve today via editing. Unfortunately, so many of the shots offer no editing possibilities because they’re single-subject center-shot with no idea what was around them that might have made for a better, more interesting photo. I do have a few examples, at least.

Most if not all these were shot with a Canon PowerShot S30. All things considered, not a bad camera for its time.

At least I was awake enough to notice the anteaters

I have to think that I could have moved to the side and shot the anteaters in at least a bit of profile. At least I noticed them. As far as I know, this isn’t something you see on your average church. I should mention that this is in Quito, where we spent a day or two before being able to get to the Galapagos.

Why does this look … wrong?

I thought at first this isn’t level, but I believe it’s actually pretty close judging by the lamp post. Of course, Quito is far from level itself. I think it’s a little fish-eye. I like the shift from green to brick and concrete to city to mountain to sky,a nd I’m pretty sure that’s what I had in mind. It just feels like it’s not the photo it could/should be.

A missed opportunity

By choosing a different angle could I have made one cloud or the other into the angel’s second wing?

Just for fun

I think this one’s fine because it is what it is — a tug of war across the equator.

No question what the photo is about

Some things always work — rim lighting

Of course back then I didn’t even know it had a name.

I think I’ll continue this retrospective next week. I’m traveling most of the week so I’m going to need an easy post for next Friday, and I have several more Galapagos shots I want to share.

Galapagos, or If I Knew Then What I Know Now