I've never struggled or tried so hard with editing my photographs when it comes to blending them nicely together as a series with the photographs that I took in a random place in Switzerland. I wanted to showcase some of the other magnificent views we saw during the road trip, but it has been 4 days already since I just stared for hours at my computer screen, figuring out what would work best. Post-processing the same images over and over again to give them the look and feel that brings out the best of the image itself. Obviously, that is my own opinion and my own style. Giving a unique style to every photograph that I take. Manually editing them. This stuff takes some time, but in the end, it is worth it.
I guess I am just too picky, or I am very careful with what I publish. I mean, it's never done. A common trait of being an artist, at least that's what I heard before. While the above image has the realistic color cast all over it, I feel that the orange of the sunset is distracting too much, in overall the hardest thing to remove is the haze in the clouds since the altitude of both the mountain and where we were standing was pretty high, this makes the haze visible in the photograph quickly too red, too green or too blue when I crush the blacks in the image so I can soften it a bit. One of the other edits I did had that dreamy look, but in my opinion, it has too much red/magenta in the haze. Maybe just go black and white? I tried that and felt it could be a great addition to my black and white photographs. But it just didn't cut it.
After 4 days, I am just 'done' with it. I have over 100.000 raw files containing photographs sitting on the computer that I have never published till this very day. They are all great photographs, and occasionally, I open them years later to get a fresh look at it, and then maybe I will publish one or two... Patiently waiting for the right time to publish a 'piece' of art whenever I felt it was finished feels right for me, and even then I do re-edits. As time flows, seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, hours become days and days become months. Until I know it, years have passed and the same old photograph has been waiting to be re-opened. I guess this has to do with the perception of time, fashion and colors. Basically, everything changes. And change is good.
[Pops up an old folder of Switzerland]
[15 minutes later]
I picked this random photograph I took in 2015. It probably didn't catch my eye before, but it's a pretty cool photograph. Not so sure what I was talking about before, but uhm... I probably am just griefing about the fact I can't get the shots done and that it consumed more time than planned. (scrolls back up to take a look at the first photograph) So, the other edit I did, was this one, color downed the orange tones a lot to make it easier to consume for the viewer.
I don't think I should do more freewrites xD
TL;DR: What edit do you prefer? And why?
Ruben out