Construct and Deconstruct

I grabbed some good photos recently from a small assignment. Basically the point of this post is that a photographer needs to approach each assignment as if it were a subject that will yield great images for contests or portfolio.

Let me get down to what goes on at the paper though because it's never as good as it sounds. This assignment turned out to be a good one for me, but as fate would have it this wouldn't come without some sort of give and take.

After getting the assignment and shooting it. I turned my images into the office. Usually graphic images like these would be hailed as great art and be thrown up onto the page without any major fuss. However, the adviser of our paper decided that images of people were not the best concept for the progress on the restoration and renovation of a building. Instead, he wanted something that gave more of a sense of place. Something like a shot of the outside of the building. An image with no human element. Clearly a photojournalist at heart (sarcasm).

Well thankfully my editor was good enough to agree with me and to stand up for me. This is what good editors do. They stake their claim in a very text driven establishment.

The order of these photos on this page is the order in which they were on the newspaper's page. The top one as main and the one below as secondary. I would have liked to have them switched since the guy up top is obviously bigger in the shot than the guy below. That aside, the one below is a much better image graphically. it also "sets the scene" better.

What I'm getting at with this post is that you need to shoot strong all the time. It's important to want to find great art everywhere because great art is everywhere. I'm talking to myself also right now because there are definitely images that I don't look for when I'm at a boring assignment.

Making attempts to find good images is what makes a strong portfolio. If you try hard all the time and you come out with tons of images, some of them are guaranteed to be portfolio worthy.