Yesterday I visited the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum with my camera. This morning as I re-visited the photographs I made yesterday I was struck by an image that I had ignored yesterday. It reminded me about all of the
Creative Choices We Make in Photography
The same could be said for any creative endeavor. We make choices all of the time and we’re often not conscious of them.
For example, I made the photograph at the top of this blog post at f/4.0. I chose to place the focus on the green spiky stem in front of the flower, leaving the flower and background soft and dreamy.
In this image, made at f/4.0 also, I placed the focus on the flower leaving the green spiky stem in the foreground soft, and the background soft.
And I made this photograph at f/16. All of the foreground is in focus as well as some of the background.
Same Subject, Different Choices
There are as many choices in the edit process as there are when clicking the shutter. How saturated do I want the image to be? Does it need to be cropped? Where do I want to lead the viewer’s eye? Is the image too warm? Too cool? How bright or dark do I want the image to be? What is the mood I am trying to convey?
And the answer is always, “It depends.”
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
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It depends upon what my artistic intent is. What am I trying to say? Sometimes it even depends upon my mood. This is where artistic voice comes in.
Most of the time my purpose is to show the wonder I feel in nature, and to see beauty where people seldom look for it. I’m looking for the lyrical and the miracle.
What is your creative purpose and how do you make your creative choices?
May you walk in beauty.
Here’s one more choice with the same subject — toned black and white
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