Emotion or technical excellence?

Continuing the Blue Hour exploration, which seems to be my theme this week, I dropped the wife at work around 7.30am and then set out to capture my 365 image of the day. I knew I wanted a shot from the carpark outside her offices comprising the view looking back towards “that” snicket and this time of the morning was ideal.

I only took two images however before the heavens opened and I was left scurrying for the car dragging tripod and camera behind me. It clearly wasn’t going to stop quickly and as I knew from experience that there was only five or ten minutes of the blue “hour” left I decided to go with what I had. Both looked OK on the LCD screen and both should be sharp as they’d been shot on a tripod at f16 – it was worth taking a chance that I had what I wanted and heading for a warm coffee.

Back home I quickly realised that my favourite of the two is the second as it has a stronger composition however there is one snag, it has three rain drops on the lens which given the lighting conditions this morning have flared and stand out very strongly. Removing them is not going to be an easy task, although I will have a go of course. However, I’m trying to present my 365 series largely as-seen with only basic adjustments. So, should I go with the stronger composition despite the hard-to-eradicate drops or should I opt for the weaker composition with the technically better presentation?

I chose what I felt was the better composition; emotion to my mind is a far more imporatant element in photography than technical perfection and I felt this version (above) better captured the moment. However, accepting that your mileage may vary I have included the “rejected” composition, the mono version of which is shown below.