Every time I take the train, I try to see if I can get some decent shots out the window, partly because you see cities and their surroundings from a perspective that is unattainable otherwise.
It’s most a futile exercise—the windows are dirty, the shutter speed has to be very fast and the shot is often dark, composition is a matter of luck. Sometimes I get a shot that I like but that just isn’t going to work unless I do something transformative to it. Hence this shot.
I used to play endlessly with the sliders and settings on Photoshop and Lightroom—they offer a childlike fascination when you’re first seeing what they do, and that eventually rises into a more sophisticated understanding of what a digital camera is doing on a number of its settings. The problem with some of the best filters, including those available in other software applications, is that the presets are so good and interesting but also so automated that you can end up with a bunch of images that you love and yet feel that you had absolutely nothing to do with, where the filter is doing all the work. (Say for example the following self-portrait.)
That’s what curtailed my own experimentation for a while. I want to dive back in some day soon to make some multi-layer images using Photoshop—I have a sense of what I’d be trying to do now—but the basic idea remains kind of uncomfortable in the sense that outcomes often feel like you got lucky with a robot carnival barker spinning some hidden wheel.