Unretouched, photo & all text © Irene O’Garden 2014
I often fiddle a bit with my photos—not much, but subtly increasing contrast or emphasizing a hue here or there to intensify what I perceive as their emotional impact.
Not so with the photo above, which I snapped a few steps from the door of The Memoir Institute in upstate New York, site of my brief but fruitful writing retreat this week. Didn’t even hit “Enhance Photo.” Or rather I did, but preferred the unadorned version.
This landscape already expressed a hand-tinted quality that day, an old-fashioned peacefulness.
Some things are right as they are, it said.
How much we retouch nowadays, for we can—photos, hair color, bodies, even. I certainly retouch my writing.
It’s a relief when life reminds us that just because we can manipulate doesn’t mean we must. “Enhancing” does not always enhance. Only our own awareness can do that.