So, Gato Moteado and I have been having a PM conversation about growth as an artisan and
photographer. With that conversation in mind I've taken the liberty of downloading one of his images and making a small correction to it. There's not much to pick at in his work but during my classwork in Portrait photography I was taught, no hammered, that there should be only one apparent light source and hence only one catchlight in the subject's eyes and there must be a catchlight. It's a small thing and most people don't notice but it was guaranteed to earn a re-shoot on any classwork.
Below is what I'm talking about.
On the right is the original and in it the reflections of both the main light and the fill light can be seen in the frog's eye. On the left I painted over the fill light reflection in Post. It's a tiny thing and everything else is just about as perfect as anyone could ask; a strong diagonal composition of the perch, great placement of the frog and technically impeccable. It's the kind of composition that flows so naturally that it's not apparent that he did it intentionally.
It's the small things that help us grow past whatever plateau of skill we achieve and I look forward to Gato's critique on my work when I get around to shooting something new which I hope to do this week.
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to pull 16x20s off 35mm K64 and TriX. Today it's easy to pull that size from a 5meg point and shoot. The other is that I can't stop messing with it in Post. I keep 'improving it' until it's too noisy to upload 
Those are the things I'm aware of, the rest I need to have pointed out to me.
but the key to real creativity is to figure out when the throw all the rules out . . .
It's a TINY detail, but it does make the photo better.
Who knew?
Thank you.
If you do enough little things it makes a big difference. Trim a dry leaf, move a branch or add a reflector. Like your moon pictures benefit from cool still air, every little thing enhances the things we see and share.
