H

ow do you go about choosing your best images?

Strange as it may sound, finding your ‘hero’

images can be harder than you’d imagine.

As photographers we can’t help making emotional

connections to our subjects and that can have a distorting effect

on the way we see and assess our photos. Take for example a

photo of a small child. While the mother or father of the child

are likely to relate to the photo on a purely emotional level,

other viewers are more likely to respond to factors like lighting,

composition, colour, etc. That’s a rather extreme example,

but any photographer who has put together a portfolio, photo

essay or exhibition will tell you that being able to sort your

images into some sort of heirarchy, knowing ‘what goes with

what’, and which images to leave out, is actually one of the most

important and undervalued skills a photographer can have.

34 AUSTRALIANPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

heroes

Choose

your

HOW TO Pick Your Best Images

Being able to identify your

best images is one of the

most important skills in

photography. Wildlife and

landscape photographer

Darran Leal explains how

he chooses his ‘hero’

images – the shots that

lead his photo essays.

AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHY + DIGITAL SEPTEMBER 2015