This portfolio of pictures is a collection of the best photographs I've made. I've ranked them the way I see them. For me, a good photograph engages the eye, captures an intriguing moment in time, and tells a story.
To engage, a photograph must have strong composition (that mix of the elements of design such as balance, line, contrast, rhythm, etc.) Good composition will draw your eye around the photograph, back and forth between its elements.
An essential characteristic of photography is its relationship to time. The act of making a photograph freezes those things around the camera into the photograph: the subject in front of the lens, the position of the photographer, even the gesture of pointing the camera and clicking its shutter. This sense of the moment is essential to a good photograph.
Photography can be a valuable documentation tool, but a photograph on its own is ambiguous. Without context, viewers can take any number of meanings from a photograph (which makes a photograph function like any other work of art). This slippery nature of photographs combines with their concrete imagery, and with their window on a specific moment, to invite explanation by way of some small narrative in the mind of the viewer. At least for me, the best photographs do.
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JH 2019.03
Ilford XP2
