Marty’s photo of the day #5015: I call this a “pipe cleaner spider.” I photographed it with a film camera on my trip to the Amazon Rainforest in 2001. Back then I was still using film cameras, and I had trouble focusing on the spider, which was moving and had very little surface for the camera to read. Alas, this and the other photo I shot were both out-of-focus. So I added the most fixable of the two images to my photo revival project, as explained below:

Although my current books are fiction, my first two books, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents and Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico, were nonfiction, featuring photos and stories of Deb’s and my adventures as we traveled the world looking for rare and interesting wildlife.

Those travels took place between 2001 and 2014, and in the years following, digital cameras, photo editing programs, and my own photo editing skills have come a long way. My current project is to revisit photos I rejected for my books but might have included had I been able to overcome their quality issues.

Now, with better editing skills and programs, I can save many photos I couldn’t have saved before. While not all blurry, soft, or noisy photos are repairable, it’s tremendously satisfying to revive photos where the animals did their job, but either I or my equipment failed.