How do you decide on your 5 favourite photos?

[The_Traveler]

I'm in the same boat as everyone - too many 'favorites' and they are all personally meaningful rather than compelling 'images.'
These four came to mind immediately.

 

[ronlane]

I haven't even looked back to rate them. I feel like I keep getting better at this time, so it would constantly be changing.

 

[ShooterJ]

Don't really know.. Guess I hadn't considered it. I have one favorite photo, but I didn't take it. And nothing I take will ever replace it as my one top favorite. Hehehehe

Strange position but it is what it is.

 

[Designer]

Trying to think about this;

Snaps when my kids were little.
Travel pics.
Most of which would not receive rave reviews.

 

[imagemaker46]

I'm in the same boat as everyone - too many 'favorites' and they are all personally meaningful rather than compelling 'images.'
These four came to mind immediately.

There is a simple look to these images that I find visually very strong.

 

[imagemaker46]

Personally I shoot a lot of different subjects and could probably come up with 5 sports images I like, and 5 portraits, and like what has been said, picking one from each area would be a difficult choose. I will go through what I have and see if I can come up with my favourite 5 from different areas, might take me a few days though.

 

[ronlane]

Well, I did a quick look at my flickr page for something that stood out as my favorite and this has to be it right now. I have been wanting to get this in a 10x20 canvas or wrap.


Moon-5 b&w by Ron_Lane, on Flickr

 

[amolitor]

Lew, have you noticed the very very strong structural similarities between 1, 3, and 4? They're awfully close to being the same picture. #2 isn't as much of an outlier as it looks, either.

---

Pictures serve a lot of functions for us. Most of them are just memory cues, a reminder of a person, a thing, an event. Our reaction to the picture is almost entirely based on our personal associations. These pictures are the most powerful, for us, and the least powerful for other people (speaking generally). Like practically everything else in life, this represents a point in a spectrum. We have personal associations with almost any picture, whether we took it or not.

We might reasonably have as a favorite (I dropped the U, ha! Take that, Imperialist running dog!) a blurry picture of the first child's first birthday, because that was an important Event. The picture sucks, but the memory is purest gold.

At some point, as photographers or at any rate people who aspire to be photographers, we start to think about "good" pictures as well as simply powerful memory aids. We also have a notion of favorite based on whether we think the picture itself is good.

Then we can start parsing senses of "good". Is it a good picture of grandma, because it really strikes us as capturing her personality? Now that grandma has passed, this picture hits us on several levels. It might be a favorite because even thought it's only a pretty decent portrait, it's grandma and we loved her.

Is it just a really great composition of that tree next to that stream in that, oh where was it, Montana? Maybe North Dakota, I don't recall? This could be a favorite too, despite the obviously very shallow set of personal associations. We still bring baggage to it, but it's not about personal memories any more, it's about streams and trees in general, and other pictures we saw, and anyways we just LIKE it a lot, and are proud that we did so well.

Anyways. It's a complicated question. Interestingly, based on what I have gathered about you (imagemaker46, that is) it's possible that you look at pictures somewhat differently. As a working professional and the child of one, perhaps those personal snaps are less of a feature of your life. Perhaps for you it's much clearer, and it's about Did I Make A Good Picture. That's just speculation, though.

 

[ShooterJ]

I think the reasons for someone having a favorite(s) are vastly different from one to the next. I have a favorite photo... but it isn't one I took. I'm sure I could pick out favorites that I've taken... but nothing I do, or see anywhere else is ever going to trump that one photo for me.

Right back to that "perception of the viewer" thing.

 

[jowensphoto]

Lew, have you noticed the very very strong structural similarities between 1, 3, and 4? They're awfully close to being the same picture. #2 isn't as much of an outlier as it looks, either..

Perhaps that's why he likes them A subconscious tenancy to gravitate toward a specific "look."

 

[The_Traveler]

I like the 'contact.'
Each of these brings back lots of memories.

 

[Nahin]

Usually never possible to compare best five. Really we couldn't because in our life has plenty amazing and memorable moment which really doesn't count with this small amount. But for best selection in massive case we use our emotion, again sometimes we try to apply reality.

 

[Dikkie]

This shot is outstanding.

Because of the hot and turbid bokeh.

 

[shicanebuzz]

I will go by feel, instinct, appeal and what I like as my best.

 

[shicanebuzz]

I will go by feel, instinct, appeal as my best bet on choosing the pictures.