My favorite photos from 2023
After six years of being a photographer things get old. This year was about circling back to the basics. It’s been about realizing that my photos looked orange, not everything needs to be shot at a low aperture, and I need to stop and rethink everything I think makes a good photograph. For many reasons the photos I picked as my favorite weren’t something I would have naturally created. But that’s the point. It was time to hop off autopilot and start capturing people’s real moments.
I think all of us photographers are having a universal experience. The trend of editing a photo orange is definitely on the way out. I used to do this because it made the photo feel more romantic, made us look tan, and made it look like we spent a lot of time on the edit. But when you focus on taking a good photo. A photo with emotion, and composition, and the right colors/light to begin with we don’t need to distract from the subject by piling on such a heavy edit all the time. I think we’re all starting to realize we need to stop ruining a good thing.
A heavy trend this year has been motion blur. To get motion blur before it’s dark enough you have to crank that aperture way up. It made me think… Why was I always shooting as low as possible? So I stopped. I noticed that the sunrays got sharper and the background played more into the story. It was like there was suddenly more emotion in the photographs. The photos felt raw and beautifully simple.
I’m going to be honest… I’ve been super judgemental and it has bitten me in the butt. I used to roll my eyes when I saw a photographer hauling around their big lights and taking photos during the day with A FLASH. It used to be my worst nightmare. I would never be a “cringy” photographer like that. Until… Disposable and film photos have become a trend. You’ll notice a trait they often have is flash during the day at a subject and it looks amazing. Well come to find out it looks amazing when done right on a mirrorless camera. These rules and preconceived judgements I’ve had for so long have held me back from composing some of my best work. So if you’re reading this knock it off because we all do it. A photo doesn’t need to be straight, it doesn’t need to be sharp, it doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be real.
A word that every photographer has been using lately to describe their work is “timeless.” I don’t buy it. I’m a firm believer that you should always do what you want on your wedding day or shoot how you want to shoot whether it’s timeless or not. You want to look back on your personality and uniqueness. If you want hot pink bridesmaids dresses do it. If you want a reception dress do it. If you want to shoot with a panty hose over your lens do it. Make it feel like you. We will forever look back on a photo and be able to date it based on the clothing, trends, camera quality, filters/presets etc. While I don’t agree that a photo will ever really be timeless I do think the most timeless thing you can do is capture the moment as it is. Capture the emotions, the colors, the little details in a photograph that get overlooked. Telling the story will be the thing that carries those precious memories through generations.