Ummmm......Just Because

Copyrighted photo by Mark T. Osler. Photo at Winter Park, Colorado. January 2014. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I really want to have a really good reason for posting this photo. Unfortunately,………..

This photo was not carefully composed. It doesn’t have an incredible moment. The light is average, at best. Graphically, it’s…uhhmmm….

OK. Here’s the deal. I’d borrowed a 1-DX body from Canon and was looking for any excuse to run some frames thru it (an a-freaking-mazing camera, by the by). I was picking up my kids from their snow boarding lessons at Winter Park when I saw “No Pain, No Pain” written into the rear window of a dirty, dusty SUV across the parking lot, just as we were backing out to leave. My brother-in-law Lou was driving. I was in the passenger seat. I picked up the camera, and shot two frames thru our own slightly-less-dirty windshield. This is one of them.

I guess the value of this (aside from padding my blog!) is to simply say that it’s okay to like a picture for no particular reason other than you just do. There are times when I get so serious about my work and limit myself creatively by buying into the ridiculous premise that if a picture’s not great, it’s not worth making. As I said…ridiculous!

So, join me in loosening up occasionally and simply enjoy the process of making a photograph - whether or not it stands the photographic world on its collective head or bursts thru any new creative frontiers.

I’m not giving you permission to be lazy or to not try to make as good a picture as you can when you decide to make a photograph. Do your best always but, if you’re grabbing a fleeting shot, and shooting thru the windshield of a car, it’s okay to cut yourself some slack and just enjoy the results for what they are.

Of course, it is generally preferable to be able to explain why you like a photograph - the light, the moment, the composition, etc. But, from time to time, it’s also completely fine to like a picture…just because.