Probably more often than some photographers would admit, the image you want to take doesn’t happen. Technical failure or good old fashioned human error, it doesn’t matter; it’s way off what you intended. Once you’ve noticed an error, it is very tempting to quickly delete it and move on. Indeed, you may be short of memory... but before you do, hold off and try and see what it looks like on a proper screen.
The small proportions and lower resolution of an in-camera screen is not as honest a reflection of the image as you may think, so you could well be throwing some pictural babies out with your digital bath water. Out of focus blurring, for example, can add rather than detract from the impact of the image. Would Robert Capa’s D Day landing image have the same impact if it was pin sharp?
Of course many mistakes aren't worth recovering, but once you rescue a beauty, what then? Have a look at the image meta data - i.e. what was the aperture, exposure time, lens focal length? By understanding that and what went wrong you could now have a technique to add to your repertoire that you can explore again and again. However, If you can't for the life of you fathom how it was done ...well, just put it down to kismet and enjoy the results.
Till next time...
Matt Peers