Sometimes (by which I mean, honestly, “a lot of times”), I second-guess the photo I’ve chosen for a particular day on the photoblog.  I usually post the next day’s photo the night before, queuing up several days if I’m going to be busy or out of town, choosing a photo that I think–at the time–has interesting composition and subject matter and looks great.  But then, sometime the next day or week or even  month–I’ll look at the photo and be like “what the hell was I thinking?”.  Ninety-nine percent of the time I catch my mistaken choice too late, once the photo has been published.  And, since I’m not a fan of rewriting history, I let it stand and make myself promise to do better next time.

Only rarely do I get a chance to fix my mistake before it’s “too late”.  Take last night, for instance.  I’d planned on going out to the roof of our parking garage late so that I could try to get some decent shots of the Moon while it was full and, for the first time in a few days, the skies were clear (or at least what passes for clear in Dallas-Fort Worth).  Knowing that I’d be up late shooting, I decided to go ahead and get a photo posted.  I’d traveled to Fort Worth on Saturday and had wandered around downtown there, taking photos like you do.  I noticed that Tarrant County was in the process of remodeling the clock tower on their courthouse, so I took a few frames from the roof of a parking garage several blocks away, unsure of how usable they’d be backlit against the stormy grey sky.  So, then, last night, I was surprised to find that they had a nice silhouetted effect that brought out the intricate details of the construction scaffolding and proceeded to choose one to process and post.  Unfortunately, in my haste, I chose poorly.  The frame I chose showed the scaffold on the left side and a crane on the right.  At the time, I think my thoughts were that these two subjects–while not traditionally composed–would balance each other out and make for an interesting comparison between the pieces of scaffold and the framework of the crane.  So I posted it.

And went about my business.  I shot the Moon. Came inside, showered off the humidity and downloaded and reviewed my Moon shots.  Then went to bed, reading some of my favorite photo-related sites and forums on my iPad.  Then I started to fall asleep.  And, as I lay there about to succumb to the Sleep Monster, it suddenly occurred to me “I’m about to publish a crap photo”.  So I leaped out of bed to my computer and chose another photo that was basically the same as the one I’d chosen, but used a strong centered composition–something one normally avoids but I think works well in this situaation–that focused on the clock tower scaffolds alone.  Processed and published, I went to bed.

And, now, almost 9 hours later, I’m still happy with my choice.  Here’s the photo I ended up posting on the photoblog:

And here’s the misfortunate first choice:

So, did I make the right choice?

The point being, never be afraid to second-guess yourself.  Oftentimes, our first instincts aren’t the right ones, despite what conventional wisdom says.