You found an interesting subject with interesting light and made a dozen or so captures that you hope will produce a terrific image. When you look at those dozen or so captures in review, how do you determine which one is best? What criteria do you use to determine which is best? This spawns an even more fundamental question: Why should you determine which one is best?
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HT2533 - Congratulations On Your Photographic Skill
14/2/2026 | 2min
HT2533 - Congratulations On Your Photographic Skill
Do we admire Dickens for his extensive vocabulary? Do we admire Beethoven because of his chord progressions? Do we applaud the work of Ansel Adams because of his masterful use of depth of field? I've thought for years that if someone compliments my photographic technique the photograph has failed entirely. Tools and techniques are not supposed to be noticed accept perhaps by students and academics.
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2500 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
HT2532 - Twelve Significant Photographs
13/2/2026 | 2min
HT2532 - Twelve Significant Photographs
I'm not sure if this assertion by Ansel Adams is apocryphal or true, but I know I've heard it my entire photographic life. "Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop." In light of today's realities, is this still valid? It's clearly not valid from a technical point of view. So what did he mean? What are the implications for photography if it's now possible to produce hundreds, perhaps thousands of good prints per year? What's the difference between significant and good?
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Must we? Does every photograph have to blow our socks off in order to be worthy of our attention? Are we so addicted in our entertainment that everything must be a car chase that concludes in a massive explosion? When did art become so connected to an adrenaline rush? When did subtlety, sensitivity, a quiet connection, a moment of insight or understanding fall out of favor with artists? Not everything has to be cranked to 11.
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HT2530 - Photography Is Fundamentally an Act of Sharing
11/2/2026 | 2min
HT2530 - Photography Is Fundamentally an Act of Sharing
A case could be made that a photograph without an audience doesn't exist. Think the proverbial falling tree in the forest when no one is there to hear it. "Yes," you might say, "but I just photograph for myself." I understand because most of our photographs will never be seen by anybody but ourselves. But isn't that still fundamentally an active sharing, at least with our future selves? This seems to imply a few questions. What is it we're trying to share? What is the most effective way to accomplish sharing? How does thinking about that audience influence what and how we photograph?
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Sobre LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 50 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work, and building an audience.
Included in this RSS Feed are the LensWork Podcasts — posted weekly, typically 10-20 minutes exploring a topic a bit more deeply — and our almost daily Here's a thought… audios (extracted from the videos.) Here's a thought… are snippets, fragments, morsels, and tidbits from Brooks' fertile (and sometimes swiss-cheesy) brain. Usually just a minute or two. Always about photography and the art life.
Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. He is the author of 13 books on photography and the creative life -- the latest books are The Best of the LensWork Interviews (2016), Photography, Art, and Media (2016), and the four annual volumes of Seeing in SIXES (2016-2019).