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Wednesday, October 28, 2015

The Shot - One Out Of 40


Susan Jane

Often I am asked, “Which is your favourite hosta or rose in your garden?” My answer varies depending on the day and the time of the year. If I had to pick one rose from my garden before a sudden demolition I would be lost.

As a magazine photographer from the times of contact sheets and strips of transparencies I learned to quickly look at the “the shot”.  Frequently I coincided with the magazine’s art director.

For a show in 1989 when I featured b+w photographs of 18 individual women posing in my basement bath tub I was singly responsible for picking “the shot”. Now all these years later I have looked at them again and noticed how my age has affected my eye for “the shot” I have become a tad more subtle and less in-your-face. 

The case in point is this lovely photograph of a woman that I knew as Susan Jane. She was extremely thin and had prominent eye brows. She liked to dance at parties and was a happy kind of woman.

Having to pick one shot from about 40 that I took for that show must have been easy enough for this magazine photographer. “The shot” was always salient. Now I am not too sure and I am happy for it.