English: Five Decisions in Photography

Updated March 2022

The process of photography consists of five critical steps, or decisions points. When all five come together, we can have magic.

1. Where to take photos, and why? Location, location, location. If you travel around the world, you have a lot of image possibilities, and if you stay in your house all the time, less. That said, a good photographer can find interesting images in any setting. For me, it’s about whether I can achieve intense focus in that locale. Location is intimately tied to why to go? What's your purpose? What do you want to communicate? Is photography a passenger or pilot on this journey? For example, in my architecture shots, including from Google Street View, I feel a documentary/historian role, and that guides the aesthetic I use in selecting and editing images.

2. What photographic equipment to use? Expensive equipment is nice, not necessary, and often not needed, and may not even be the best choice. Don't buy into the megapixel myth. What my $10 Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim with some good film is incomparable by any what any digital camera or post-processing software can do.

3. What pictures to take? At locale with equipment in hand, what are you going to click at and how? Camera settings and POVs can make a difference, but a good eye is the foundation. Timing can be everything too. Everyone recognizes the classic picture the captures “the moment”.

4. What shots to keep? Some shots get tossed, some get kept but not shown, some get shown. Being a good judge of your own work is a critical but often over-looked skill. This requires both constraint and judgment, which in part can be developed by looking at other people’s works.

5. How to present image? These decisions include any decisions made during image post-processing, framing, and a decision as to where to show it, including what digital platforms to engage it with. In my own case, my Flickr, Instagram, and Facebook streams contain different content because I have different audiences.

These decisions occur within a web of context, experience, creativity, and social and physical dynamism. In the end, only we know how we “got” to the final image, if we even remember. But as photographers, we share in the collective experience of this general process.

Image: Prescott Valley at dusk, Arizona.