On Selecting Your Personal Best
I gave myself a year-end assignment today to select my best images of 2015. I’ve avoided this in the past because it involves some challenging introspection, hard decisions and a lot of time. But, as with any good assignment, I learned a thing or two about myself.
On my first cull of the year’s 24000 images, I set aside about 160. After reviewing them many times, I narrowed it down to about 40. And that’s when I realized that many of my favourite images tell a story. I’ve been told by my friend Bill that I’m a story-telling photographer but I didn’t actually recognize it until today. So, here is a group of story-telling images from the past year.
But, how does one select images for the ‘best’ category? The process is, of course, extremely subjective. And, the stronger the emotional bond to the images, the cloudier the process. To be included here, the picture had to satisfy the following:
- the goal for the photo had to be successful. That is, does the photo accomplish what I set out to achieve?
- does the photo have visual impact? Is there a successful combination of compositional principles at play?
- does it have a meaningful personal connection? If it’s ‘just a pretty picture’, it’s not included.
And then, of course, there is the whole question of in whose eyes are the images judged? When we photograph and subsequently select our favourite images, who is it for? If we shoot for Likes on Facebook, or for points in a competition, we rob ourselves. We spend our energy guessing what others may think and never find the resonance in our soul that an image can bring when we photograph for ourselves. After entering photos in camera club competitions for about ten years, I stopped a few years ago because I recognized that the points and judges’ comments, even though positive, were no longer meaningful. They were tremendously helpful to me as a beginning photographer but, after a time, no longer pushed me forward.


















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