50 Shades of Gary

'Gary regretted asking Laura what her new book was about.'

The re-editing of ‘old’ images is not a process I’m keen on. When you shoot and edit an image it represents where you are in that moment of time, both in your abilities and your way of thinking.  

Yesterday I re-edit one of my old images, a photo I took 583 days ago! The reason is pretty exciting, I was contacted last Thursday about the possibility of using my work in a new book on self portraiture. I’m not sure how many of my images will be used or to what extent but having only previously been published in a magazine in India I’m over the moon.

The image that brought my work to their attention was one I uploaded to flickr on 23^rd January 2011, week 4 of my 52 weeks of humiliation project. They asked me to send some of my self portraits across with some details so I sent some of my newer and in my opinion better work. I got an email back asking for this image too.

Not a problem, I love the concept of this image, it still makes me laugh! Almost 7 thousand views on flick isn’t bad going so people seem to like it (although I’m sure Lauras arse helped with the stats.) Even though when I shot it I barely knew how to turn on my camera, and this was in fact one of my first experiments with off camera flash, apart from being a little underexposed the RAW file isn’t too bad.

The edit however is pretty awful. Underexposed, dull highlights, distractions that could easily be removed and horrible HDR’d skin tones. So I thought I would start afresh.

No HDR this time, I’ve been HDR clean for months now and never felt better. Using the exposure settings on the RAW file I exposed twice, once for Lauras legs and once for me and blended together using a layer mask.

To make sure the viewers eye went first to my face and then followed my eyes to Laura I need to remove some distractions. I’m lent up a cupboard, on top is a load of crap and above is a light wall. The clutter on top I should of dealt with while shooting, that’s laziness and lack of experience, but I decided I was going to get rid of the whole wall as your eye stops there first. Also the white skirting board is far lighter than anything else in frame, I contemplated extending the curtains to the floor but decided to just tone them down, I feel leaving them in gives a definition to the room and where I am.

So my new edit isn't massivley different, just a few minor tweak with exposure and a little after thought on the composition & what's in frame... But is the new edit better or should I of left it as it was? What’s your view on re-editing your old work? I'd like to know peoples thoughts.

Here's the original... (new at the top)