I’ve been going through archived photos lately, reworking some and editing ones I’d never bothered with before. Why? In part, that’s what photographers do when they get better at their editing skills, and in addition, I’ve discovered that the square format I’ve never liked is actually quite helpful at creating a photo from something I thought was useless but which I didn’t want to consign to the virtual trash bin.
That square format – the one Instagram likes so much – I’ve learned, once again, to never say never. As a matter of fact, I’m writing an article for the National Parks Traveler about the square format and Instagram, but it won’t show up until probably around June, since I already have articles in queue up through May.
For now, consider this yet another piece of advice to never delete images you think are no good because of that blurry leaf amongst the otherwise clear leaves, or the car you accidentally photographed going over a bridge with a beautiful waterfall beneath it. The squre crop tool can remove those things, but you need to keep an eye out on how you crop your image so you continue to tell the story you want of that particular landscape.
As for this image, it was captured a long time ago. I was driving from the western entrance to the park, up to Logan Pass. The clouds were low and swirling around the mountains and I stopped to get a shot along the way up to The Loop, that first real switchback up Going-To-The-Sun Road.
Copyright Rebecca L. Latson, all rights reserved
Where The Trails Take You Photography 
Very good advice, Becky. In my earlier digital days, I did not shoot in raw and sometimes only saved small jpg images. This limits what I can do with some of my older images, most of which are not very interesting, anyway. However, I have recently seen advertisements for software that supposedly converts jpg images to raw. Have you any thoughts on this?
Hmmm. I have never heard of this – how much is it? My motto is “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained,” so if it’s relatively inexpensive, you could give it a try. Just remember, your original jpg shot means that you don’t have every single bit of data available, since jpgs mean some of the data is removed. That said, I’d be curious to know what the result of taking a jpg and converting it to raw does. I have always shot in raw, saved the shot as a TIF, then, when necessary, converted the color space to sRGB and saved as a jpg.
https://topazlabs.com/jpeg-to-raw-ai/ not very expensive. There was an introductory offer early this year or late last year; but being a bit of a skeptic, I waited to see how this is received and reviewed by a few more people, before putting more money into software. I think there might be other jpg to raw converters out there, but Topaz has a good reputation for photo editing software, so maybe their version is better than others.