It's not about the moment - Part 1

What makes for a "great" photo?

Well, it's not JUST about capturing "the moment", as some people would like to believe. There is a lot more to it.

A few years ago, as I was sitting down with a client doing a portfolio review of his work, I remember coming across a vacation photo of his of a whale jumping out of the water. He was proud of the image, otherwise he would not have included it in his portfolio.

But... Was it a great photo capturing a great moment?

Well, it was certainly a perfectly-timed great moment, but the photo itself was slightly out of focus and lacked clarity. It fell well-short of standards for portfolios (ie, it certainly wasn't worthy of being published or given an award). If I recall, he was on a boat when he took the shot, and probably had his shutter speed far too slow given the motion of the boat, as well as the motion of the whale.

Right moment. Wrong camera settings.

The point here is that no matter how great the moment, if the image isn't technically great then it likely isn't a great photo. Had my client had a much quicker shutter speed when capturing the great moment, he would have had a better chance of freezing the whale's motion (as well as the water splash), maximizing the sharpness of the final image.

Now, some people will argue with me and may even bring up an example or two over the history of photography that presents an exception to my claim (the album cover of The Clash's "London Calling" comes to mind), but those exceptions are few and far between, and probably pre-date modern digital camera technology that has far more "technical" power than its film predecessors. For example, it's now much easier to correct improper exposure (ie, another type of technical shortcoming) with digital photography software than it was in the film days. Auto-focus tech is not exponentially advanced from what it was 30 years ago.

As for the London Calling image, in my opinion, if not on an album cover with graphics and text it might not even make the B or C lists of many music photographers' portfolios. In other words, it's an iconic album cover, but is it really an iconic photograph? We can leave that debate for another day.

As tempting as it may be to include technically flawed "great moments" within a portfolio, or even in a social media post, my advice is to leave the "almost" shots out. If you have to explain to someone how you "almost" got the shot, then you're probably better off leaving the image out of public view if the objective is to show your best work. You don't have to delete the image (ie save it for a Clash re-union album!), but you must learn from what you got wrong, and develop the discipline to know what to show, and what not to show if you want to be seen as a proficient photographer (especially if you refer to yourself as "professional").

NOTE: You may have noticed that this post is "Part 1", which indicates that there will be a "Part 2", and maybe more. Stay tuned...