This photograph of an iris is from 2015 when I was in college and developing techniques for a sort of "hyper-realistic" editing style. I’d probably tend to disagree with being stuck in a box, but then again it’s important to stick with things that work well under pressure.

My dad taught me that a good photograph starts with a sharp focus and so to make that happen I’d open the lens aperture all the way (this photo was probably taken with a 50mm f/1.4) and then use my DSLR’s digital preview at 10x magnification. I’d manually find the sharpest point in that 10x box. It was an awkward, painstaking process, but at the time it felt good to be right on one irrefutable thing, consistently. And when it did work, I'd manipulate color and clarity, somewhat vaingloriously.

When I was photographing like this, the initial goal was to capture a point of focus in the optimal spot to balance the composition and hold a wandering eye in check. So for this picture I guess I must have been pretty happy with the frame to push the colors so hard.

But! Unfortunately, the metadata wasn't stewarded well. The importance of metadata stewardship is something I tend to waffle on. The detail of the file’s origin is something only remembered to be found, lost somewhere in one of hundreds of folders on one of half-a-dozen 2TB hard drives. IMG_????.CR2 is a perfectly focused artifact from a moment whose context has inevitably gone blurry.