We all know how easy Lightroom makes it to sort through the “rejects”, “maybes”, and “keepers” in your catalog. But be sure to pay extra attention when filing through your shots before heaving them into the trash, as you might come across an occasional gem in spite of the photo’s flaws — a pot of photographic gold at the end of an out-of-focus rainbow, if you will.

The above shot from Pigeon Point has a few flaws — both technical and compositional — caused by the haste in which I captured it:

• the focal point is somewhere in the sand between the subject and myself,
• the cloudy, late afternoon produces little contrast in the image,
• and the orientation of the camera produces a skewed horizon line.

However, something about the image convinced me to give the image a chance in Lightroom’s Develop module. After pumping the image through Lightroom’s greyscale tool and tweaking a couple of the other settings (lens vignetting, curves, contrast & clarity, and brightness), I ended up with a gritty shot that I absolutely love:

I am by no means suggesting that you should sabotage your shots with intentional flaws. Sure, this shot (larger version here) won’t win any awards, but it serves as a perfect snapshot of that moment in time for me, more-so than the perfectly-exposed and focussed shots in the series. And, ultimately, those are the images that I want in my collection.