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This is an old chrome of mine that has been scanned. It was shot with a (used) Mamiya 645 without a light meter or prizm finder. I guessed the exposure and thought I would get nothing, but it was worth a try. When I got my film back I was thrilled, I never expected it to come out. These two were at a temple celebration in Sanur, Bali in 1994.
I started by rejecting this photograph, as soon as it came out from the scanner. The negative looked overexposed, and this reflected on the image, which was too bright. I also did not like the composition, which lacked the leading lines and was too cluttered. But this time, I decided to finish my work on this image even if I'm not going to use it in the future. If I failed with it, then I will learn from this failure and be better next time. I sat down and started to write down what I do not like about it. "Too much clutter, weak composition, overexposed" - I wrote. And then I suddenly realized that these are all minor issues! A proper crop would eliminate the clutter and unveil the composition. The overexposure was only apparent, and the file had all the details preserved. Ten minutes later I've got this result, and started to like it much more than before. I learned the lesson, but not in the way I expected: do not throw away your failures, study them, analyze, and, maybe, they are not, actually, the failures.