Snapshot celebration

As much fun as it is for me to learn about the lighting aspect of photography, I try not to get hung up on it too much. I try to blend the quality from a well-lit (natural or flash-lit) photo with the candidness that only a spontaneous "snapshot' seems to capture - easier said than done! In fact, superstar pro photographer Chase Jarvis is still striving to bring two worlds together as he just launched a celebration of the snapshot by hosting thousands of great snaps from all over the world on a website for all to see and printing his favorites to hang (for a day) at an exhibition in NYC. Check out InvitationToHang.com to see the photos or submit your own. I'm happy to be a very small part of a very cool (and humongous) project.

On a related note, I really enjoyed a quote I heard recently from long-time Life photographer Joe McNally, who passed on this tidbit from one of his camera-slinging buddies: "If you want your pictures to be better, stand in front of more interesting stuff." To me, sometimes that means going out and looking for (or spending the time waiting for) something more interesting to shoot. Other times, maybe it just means letting go of the reigns of a structured lifestyle once in a while just to see what happens right in front of you. I loved this shot, which is obviously a result of the latter - I couldn't have made this happen no matter how hard I tried...

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