WHICH ONE WORKS is not a new concept for me. Back about 10 years ago, I began compiling this series. Regretfully I stopped writing on this subject. Several readers and workshop attendees asked me to bring it back. So here it is!

When looking at our work, it is common to debate with ourselves about “Which One Works,” and which image you will process and perhaps print.  Typically, most of us take images of a subject in diverse ways. These include aspects such as different angles, exposures, portrait style or landscape style, apertures, shutter speeds and more. Varying these settings and concepts can make an image deliver a different story or feeling.

There are so many books and magazines published telling you how to make images. How many times can one write about things like “If you want a prolonged exposure, use a slow shutter speed” or “if you want Depth of field use a small aperture”? I find these writings boring and redundant. I want to know WHY each photographer made the choices he or she did. I will try and do that in “Which one Works.” In this series I will discuss and compare images and talk about why I like one over the others.

Every image should contain something that to you, is important and compelling enough to take a photograph. I will include the gear, lens settings and more for each image but more importantly what my thinking was before the shutter was depressed and why in the end, I choose the image I did.

Jack Graham