Best Shot Tuesday… the truth behind the photos

I had an interesting photography conversation with a lady at the park one day last week. She had been standing there watching me clicking like mad, not even stopping to see what I’d captured, and I guess she thought I must know something about the big clunker piece of machinery around my neck because she decided to asked me for my best advice on photographing her children. Of course, I said the first thing that popped into my head which was “find someone else to do it.”

And I was only half kidding. Children between the ages of 10 months and 4 years are said to be the most difficult and frustrating for professional photographers to photograph. Now imagine that sort of frustration while photographing your own children.

The best advice I could give her was this: Click, Trash, Edit. That is, Click like there’s no tomorrow. Trash anything that doesn’t grab your attention the first time you see it. Edit everything.

Incidentally, I take an average of 900 pictures a week. 750 of those get trashed right off the card. 40 get edited that week (and the others are saved for whenever I have a free moment. yeah, right.) Only 20-25 end up on the blog or sent off for printing.

Most of the pictures I post on the blog are nice. Some of them are good. Only a couple are great. A great picture tells a story. It captures your attention. It commands you to afford it more than just a passing glance.

Ansel Adams, a master photographer, once said “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” With that in mind, I have to tell you that “Best Shot Tuesday” is not about great pictures. Mostly it is about the picture I like the most, the “best shot” from the week before. Sometimes there is an obvious favorite. Sometimes I play eeny, meeny, miny, moe. The truth is, there are usually a lot that I like, but none that I love.

So, here is the crop from last week, all taken while visiting my family in Birmingham. You choose.

 

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“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”   -Imogen Cunningham