Compliments

What is the best compliment you feel you could receive about your work? Some candidates might be that your work is.....beautiful, gorgeous, looks like a painting, breathtaking....maybe even unusual or different.

I recently received an interesting compliment. I initially didn't think much about it, but, with further contemplation, I believe it is probably one of the finest comments I could have received. Let me preface this story by saying that those who know me or have been readers of this blog know that I am more apt to voice my uncertainties regarding the quality of my work than to report accolades. I decided to post this simply because of the insight that it gave me.

I happen to meet a woman I know that was looking at a photograph hanging in an office. It was a lovely sunset photo and, as one who mainly does nature photography, I certainly have taken my share of sunset photos, and this one was quite nice; in fact I told her that I would have been glad to have taken and displayed it. She responded by saying that, yes, it was a very pretty picture, but that "your pictures make me think".

Isn't that an interesting comment? Sure, documentary or photojournalistic photos should make you think, but I had never really contemplated that as being an attribute of nature photographs. I had mainly considered the mark of a successful nature photograph as making you 'feel' something. And yet, in retrospect, the fact that they should make you think, and that 'making you think' is an important attribute of nature photography is obvious. I had just never really thought about it that way.

Sometimes, an innocent comment can give important insight!