How much is that doggie…

… in the window?  It was the Boston Terrier in the window that made me want to take a picture of this store window.  I was on the first night photo walk that I attended last March in Tarpon Springs, and I took a lot of photos that night that I never tried to use before.  It seems like I’ve bogged down a little, I need time to catch up mentally.  My constant quest to get out and take more pictures leaves me not a lot of time to think about the lessons I’ve been learning.  And I know how ridiculous that sounds since I’ve had much more time off than time at work.  So I decided to go back and look at some of the thousands of photos I’ve taken in the last year to see what photos I skipped over.  The big take away from this exercise is the ‘transform’ tool in Lightroom.  This last picture was hopelessly on an angle, and trying to fix it by straightening it in the crop tool wasn’t working.  Since the main street of Tarpon Springs is a hill, and I hadn’t tried to level the photo when I took it, I assumed it was hopeless.  Then I remembered to try ‘transform’, and hit ‘auto’.  Amazing.  I know that you should be trying to take the perfect photo as you take it, using the best settings and composition to tell the story of the photo.  But I’m glad to have the editing tools I’m learning about also.  Technology is a wonderful thing.