Apparently it's World Philosophy Day

Abandoned Thinker, 2008

I just read over on Jörg Colberg's blog that it is World Philosophy Day. I was going to comment on his post but since he doesn't appear to have have comments enabled, I thought I would do it here. He wrote that:

This reminds me of the following - taken from the introduction of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - which could serve as one of those very useful rules of good writing: "what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence."

I think that this can be equally applied to photography. If you can shoot something that is clearly what you intended in your mind's eye, and in the way you wanted to photograph it, then you should do it. But if you can't - because say the sun is in the wrong part of the sky (right location/wrong time of day), the model looks awkward in the pose, it's too cramped a space for the lens you have, the location doesn't turn out to work, etc, then you should pass over the shot.

Don't compromise just to get something out of it. I passed over quite a few shots when driving through the Rockies last year - and on the spectacular Icefields Parkway specifically - because something wasn't right. Say the entire mountain face was in shade, or the vibrant blue green of a glacial lake was drab due to it being too overcast and drizzling. It would have been a good vacation snapshot to stand in front of, but not a good landscape.

I really believe that doing an image or series of images that are half assed isn't a good idea. It dilutes what you are putting out in the world - much like posting 50 images from a photoshoot that are all essentially nearly the same dilutes those one or two killer images.

Having said that, not all of my ideas work - even when they are what I intended. :)

Mike

Mike Wood Photography

**I know I posted the image of Miss Lizzz before in September, but it seemed a good choice for this post too. :)