Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Your Choice

Your Choice.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh (‘a thousand thanks’ in Irish Gaelic) to the four ladies who administer and set the weekly photo challenges. They are angels all!

One year of challenges has now just past and Patti has offered us a blank canvas this week with her Your Choice challenge.

A few years back, MB attended a photo workshop given by acclaimed American photographer Steve Simon. Or maybe he’s Canadian?!

Anyway, one photo tip that stuck in MB’s head after the workshop was that if one goes around the back of the subject or subject matter, one will often catch an interesting perspective. Most people with a camera are going to want to catch the face of the subject, so a photo from the rear view will at least be different than most of the other shots of the same person or subject or event.

MB remembers the example given by SS to demonstrate the point. It was a shot of the legendary American baseball player Babe Ruth when he played his last ever game. 99% of photographers jumped in front of Ruth as he walked off the field, catching him face-on. But one photographer took a shot from the back, catching his famous number 3 on the back of his shirt as he walked away. That rear-view shot became the iconic shot of Babe Ruth’s retirement.

So MB often sneaks around the back to take a look at the rear view.

Here’s one such shot – of a Russian Girls Choir from a recent Russian Cultural event on the Doha Corniche in Qatar. At least one hundred people were using cameras and phones to take the face shot. In MB’s opinion, the below shot is a far better photo than any of the ones he later shot from the front.