I am not a sports or wildlife photographer. What I mean by that is that I'm not trained nor practiced at doing that kind of photography. Recently however, I set out to photograph my grandkids at their softball game. My respect for sports photographers has skyrocketed.

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We have each created our own photographic literacy and history of photography by the books and exhibitions we've chosen to see. That necessarily leads to holes in our understanding. For example, I know very little about German photography — and I know that hole in my knowledge means I'm missing some great work. And that is just one example!

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LW1453 - To Thine Own Self Be True

A friend of mine was recently offered an exhibition in a nice gallery. He was excited for the opportunity, but then began the negotiations and compromises the gallery requested. For example, the gallery wanted him to adopt a limited edition strategy which he doesn't do. The gallery wanted a certain kind of mat board and framing. Is it advisable that we allow the gallery to influence our artistic endeavors like this?

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Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com.

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Managing moments doesn't seem like it would be the core of the creative life, but the longer I pursue the art life the more I think managing moments is the key to success. Elsewhere, I've mentioned capturing ideas when the bubble up from our subconscious. Gear is another example. We all crave and love a full-featured camera that allows it to make the images of our dreams. Many times, however, such a dream machine comes with a penalty that completely neutralizes its capabilities. It's better to have a good camera with you than it is to have a perfect camera at home on the shelf.

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It's a bad practice to crop a vertical out of a horizontal capture. For one reason, doing so loses over half the pixels your camera captures. Isn't it a better strategy to just develop the habit of composing both a horizontal capture and a vertical capture wherever possible?

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Every picture we make operates as a time capsule. It's a historic image, which becomes more historic with the passage of time. I like to think of it this way: With every click of the shutter, we launch another time capsule into the future. And at its essence, each time capsule says, "this moment was important."

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I've always found that efforts to preserve subtle shadow details are important, particularly in landscape photography. This was always a challenge in the film days because the toe of the exposure curve was relatively flat and didn't provide much separation of tones. The best strategy was to increase exposure. But here in the digital age, I've found a combination that provides a simple method to help preserve subtle shadow detail.

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In 2022, we published a book titled Trilogies. Each of these trilogies consisted of three images the photographers used to illustrate a story, an expanded view of a subject, or a guided and deeper involvement with a scene. In the book, these three images were presented on facing pages. As a layout, this got me thinking about printing three images on a single sheet of paper and matting and framing them as a sort of triptych.

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You won't know that you've succeeded until you first fail and then correct it. Even worse, if you get it right the first time and think you've never failed, that probably means you haven't engaged sufficient risk and pushed the boundaries of the easy.

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When choosing which lens to take with me out photographing, it often boils down to a debate between two strategies. Do I use a two-lens strategy where both are the best lenses I own? This will require a lot lens swapping and invariably some dust on the sensor. The other option is a travel lens with a "super zoom," one with a 10 to 1 zoom ratio that requires no lens swapping in the field. It's a good lens, but not quite as sharp as the superior lenses. Since I can't have my cake and eat it too, I'm reduced to picking my compromise.

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