Your BEST Photo, Part Three
In my last post, I looked at my most “interesting” photos as determined by Flickr. I hope I established that these photos were popular not because of any intrinsic value they possessed but by virtue of environmental factors like when they were posted and how they received the recognition they garnered. Obviously for me, then, using Flickr’s tools to see what’s most interesting or popular isn’t going to help me arrive at my “best” photo.
My biggest problem with attaching this word to one particular piece is that it means by definition that the others are lacking something. I don’t mean to sound like I think all of my work is perfect by any means, but I do work hard to make sure that a photo turns out the way I envision it. But some works are undeniably better than others. I think that when the right subject matter comes along with the right light and you happen to have the right lens with the right camera settings and then later do the right processing – that that’s when you get something special. Most of the time, I’m working with only two or three of those elements and doing the best I can under those circumstances, but when you hit all five of those – magic!
My brother has this tendency to ask after every movie, “What was your favorite part?” The question used to nearly infuriate me, because how could I pick just one scene in an incredible movie to pick as my favorite, and why did I have to anyway? But then I realized that it really made me reflect on the movie and examine my response to different parts of it. For instance, there’s usually a moment when the plot, the acting, the cinematography, the music, and the writing all came together to distill some fundamental truth about the characters or the story or even life itself.
The same thing happens with books – there’s usually that one scene or that one line that encapsulates the whole sordid story – all the tears, all the regrets, all the disappointments and the feelings too fine to put any other way:
“And with them was Brett.”
This is where the entire notion of being able to quantify the attributes of art completely falls apart. I could go through my photos and grade them all on a scale of 1-10, maybe even break it down by attributes (Lighting: 4; Novelty: 3; Mass Appeal: 3…) but nothing can define that moment when your heart shatters or maybe just stutters a bit and then that moment is left indelibly imprinted in your mind; great art, I think, becomes a part of you. Some work etches a little deeper; others barely scratch the surface.
As to why that happens – why some works cause that visceral reaction – I wish I knew. But I do know which photos do that for me, and thankfully a couple of those were made BY me. So in the end, I think I’m going to go with that.