Every Picture Is a Compromise
Lessons from the Also-rans
Most photography websites show the photographer's very best work. Wonderful. But that's not the full story of a creative life. If we want to learn, we'd better pay attention to the images that aren't "greatest hits" and see what lessons they have to offer. Every picture is a compromise — the sum of its parts, optical, technical, visual, emotional, and even cosmic – well, maybe not cosmic, but sometimes spiritual. Success on all fronts is rare. It's ok to learn from those that are not our best.
This is a series about my also-rans, some of which I've been able to improve at bit (i.e., "best effort"), none of which I would consider my best. With each there are lessons worth sharing, so I will.
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Original digital capture
What I saw that I liked:Nature often is a very random, disorganized affair — like the randomly scattered boulders in the above. What I don't like in the picture:Our task in composition is to give the chaos of nature some connection with our human need for a simpler view of things. What I learned:At left are two examples from the same area as the image above. In these two cases, I've tried to find a bit of a Zen-like arrangements of the rocks — not by moving any of them, but rather by circling them and looking until an arrangement became visible that felt like something. You may not, but that's one of the fun things about this kind of photographic challenge. This is my response to the place. Yours may be entirely different. |
