About My Favorite Photograhs
Primeval Forest, #2, Victoria Australia
My favorite photographs are artifacts of many of my life's most memorable experiences. When viewing them please remember that they are my favorites and might not be yours. Also remember that "favorite" and "best" have different meanings, as do "memorable" and "enjoyable".
Technical quality played a role in the selection process but was not a primary consideration. A more major criteria was whether the image captures the experience I had when capturing it. That's a safe one, since no one else can know the answer. Likewise, the most important criteria was whether I like it and how much.
Favorites can change for innumerable reasons. My favorite hair style was different when I had more hair, some of my favorite television programs are different than they were not long ago, and my favorite walking shoes have changed a few times as better versions came along. I expect that the selection and number of my favorite photographs will also change. Some photographs hold my favor over time and some do not. I am not sure why, but if I knew I would capture only those that can withstand the test of time.
I have read that a page of this type should contain roughly 10 to 20 images. I found it impossible to distill countless images captured over nearly 50 years down so few. Maybe I am bad at culling, have done too much, or like too much of what I have done. Regardless, I got the image set down to about 150, only 7.5 times the maximum recommendation. I won't lose any sleep over it. "My Favorite Photographs" page is mostly for my own use, but I don't mind if others take a look. On the off chance that anyone else actually tries going through all of photographs and the sheer number causes extreme anxiety, I apologize. It might be a good idea for them to seek professional help in dealing with it.
On a semirelated note, if the names of places or features associated with some photographs seem contrived it may be because they are. If a photograph's location is not widely known, I try to use accurate and descriptive names that do not disclose its location. When that is impossible I make something up that hopefully conveys an aspect of the subject or my feelings about it. Unfortunately many of the older photographs were named after their subject and/or location name. Renaming all of them along with the web pages on which they appear and the descriptions that often accompany them is a huge amount of work that may never happen. It is difficult to show the beauty and wonder of a place or thing without helping to destroy it. I have written about sharing photograph location information online and photography hot spots in the past so there is no need to repeat all of that here. I wish I was better at making up names, but they should not matter. As William Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet". Alternatively and equivalently, garbage by any other name would smell as foul.
Dean