A lot of photography isn’t about taking photos, it’s about editing and having standards. For example, yesterday I took around thirty photos of a snail on the sidewalk near my apartment. (Snails are very photogenic. They do a great job of staying still for the camera.) After throwing out photos with significant motion blur, poor focus, etc, I had nine. It was cloudy, so lighting was low and the color balance was all out of whack. Most pictures were underexposed because I kept the shutter speed fast to reduce motion blur.

Alright so I had eight decent photos. I kept an out of focus photo because WordPress galleries do weird things if they’re not three columns wide. Anyway, I fixed the exposure levels, corrected the white balance, and rotated a couple of tilted images…

I chose my favorite…

…tweaked the white balance a little more…

…and used the clone tool to get rid of the blemish above the snail’s shell.

Success! Not bad for a refurbished D40 with a kit lens.