In a recent post: Soul/Creativity on his Photos and Stuff blog, Andrew Molitor provides the following quote (which he attributes to Ansel Adams):

The final image you achieve will, to quote Alfred Stieglitz, reveal what you saw and felt. If it were not for this element of felt, the term creative photography would have no meaning.

For many years I had difficulty with the first part of this quote: revealing what I saw. My failure to do this almost led me to abandon photography. I didn’t develop or print my own film so my options were limited. This changed (although it took me a while to realize it) with the advent of digital photography and now, with a little help from Lightroom and even less from Photoshop I’m able to get an image, which is much closer to what I thought I would get when I pressed the shutter button.

The second part of the quote suggests that I should also try to reveal what I felt when I took the picture. I hadn’t thought much about this aspect. My first reaction was to think that I didn’t really feel much at all. But then it occurred to me that I’m not, I hope, some kind of psychopath who doesn’t feel anything at all. I must be feeling something. I just have to try harder to articulate what it is.

Unfortunately, I often look back on old photographs and rework them. This particular picture was taken in 2013 so my memory of what I felt at the time is a bit vague. I imagine, however, that it was something along the lines of “Aw how cute! The little one is trying to hide behind the other one”. Ok, maybe not the deepest, or most thought provoking feeling, but that’s probably it.