I shoot for the little red flags.

I've received over a hundred facebook notifications today for the Urbana 12 album I posted last night. Likes, comments, and tag requests trigger the little red flag over and over again. There are quite a number of my posts that generate this kind of response, and Darrell and I both know to expect it when we do a major upload (and most of our uploads are major). 

I don't think anyone else really cares, but the average facebook photo upload has changed. Many are individual mobile uploads, sometimes synced from instagram, and if there are multiple-photo uploads from the phone, often one caption gets uploaded for all six photos in one album. But even before the big shift to smart phone uploads, Darrell and I took our albums a lot more seriously than most, with photo captions, descriptive titles, and photo tags for all the photos. We've talked and laughed about how much energy we put into these albums that people click through so quickly, but the way we do them probably won't change. People love and enjoy our albums and we get such a good response from them...and in a lot of ways, that's success for us as photographers. 

Though I rarely think of it while shooting, I really do take pictures for people. I take pictures so they'll have record of their memories. I take pictures so they can see what they looked like in the moment when they weren't even thinking of posing for a photo. I take pictures to show what life was in that exact second, so later they can say, "I had no idea I looked like..." or "It looks like we're having so much fun!" or "Why on earth were we posing like that?!" I show people what was going on when they were doing nothing but living, enjoying, loving. 

While it may sound like it, this doesn't just apply to candid pictures. This applies to event photos, where people on stage or running the event don't know what things look like from the audience's perspective. It applies to forcing everyone to pause and take a group photo, so you can remember exactly who was there with you. It apples to the scenes and stills and props, because all these contribute and help recreate the world where the photos were taken. It's really about perspective and giving as much of it as possible.

I take the added energy of filtering bad photos, cropping decent ones, and captioning everything because it's an added layer of enjoyment for everyone, along with being a medium of communication to share something about a scene/photo that no one would know otherwise. Darrell and I often get comments on our captions (he is way more clever about it than me and gets more responses!) too. I think part of it is the fun of a personal commentary, but I also think people aren't used to getting that perspective anymore. 

My goal is not to take a good photo just for the sake of a good photo. I take good photos--one composed with intention, free from distractions, and technically good--because these factors help people laugh at memories, relive good times, and appreciate life. And I love the little red flags not because they affirm what I do and I am a good photographer, but they mean that I've achieved my purpose and people can relive these moments with joy.