On Photography

This is from the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN on September 2nd 2008. I had gotten close to police action on the previous day and enjoyed a face-full of mace, but during this march I hung back with another journalist. I had actually lamented to myself because I wasn’t sure there would be anything good to photograph if I kept my distance from police, but the march was much less dramatic and I got some good shots.

In truth, I take tons of shitty pictures but I just show people the good ones. For every picture I post, there’s often up to 20 (or more) that didn’t make the cut. My memory card fills up quickly. It’s not easy to know which shot out of dozens of seemingly identical shots is the one you should use. While learning how to use a photo-editing program is vital, it’s not going to pull a rabbit out of a hat if you don’t know what you’re doing with your camera. You can only do so much to try to redeem a bad picture. If it sucks, then it sucks.

I leave a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor but I also save it. I planned on selling some of it as stock photography, but then I started going back to see what I may have overlooked. This picture is one of them. I have a critical eye and even now I can see all of the reasons why I didn’t include this with the initial batch of RNC08 photos: it’s hectic, the woman in pink has her feet chopped off, and it would’ve been so much better if I had been a few feet back and to the right. But I’ve decided that it doesn’t have to be perfect.