the enemy

​The perfect is the enemy of the good.
                —Voltaire

The prompt for today was "outtake," which is somewhat excruciating. Like all photographers, I take a lot of pictures I don't post. Some are terrible - in composition or lighting or unflattering or something... - but some are just too similar to other shots or I have too many pictures where I'm wearing something specific and I get tired of the look before I run out of pictures to post.  

Technically this outtake prompt could involve any of those pictures I describe above but it's tricky to post a picture that isn't what I intend, or it's not as good as I want it to be. However, in the interests of honesty and because I'm curious what other people post for this prompt, I picked this pic. 

It's a picture that I took while I was trying to get a different shot. Honestly, none of the shots I took that day worked for me. I was angling to get a particular kind of look to satisfy a quote I had found and I didn't like anything I came up with. This shot was a bit different in that it had some elements I liked but I couldn't quite like it enough. I tried cropping it and liked it better

But there is still something about the perspective, lighting, color combos, too "on the nose" imagery... I don't know. Something didn't sit right with me so I didn't consider using it until I saw Molly's prompt. So here it is.

It's hard to embrace a picture that I'm not totally behind, so to speak. And it's vulnerable to show messiness and process. But that's ok. As Voltaire points out, perfection can be an enemy. And it can also be boring. Whereas a mess will always be interesting, if nothing else! 

Happy outtake Sunday everyone!