Photo worthy, or potty material?

We take an awful lot of photos today. Mostly of scenes that have no business appearing in photos.

Laundry in the trunk of a minivan. A restaurant's interpretation of a burger and fries. Contents of Joe's daughter's college dorm room. Dozing cats. (I'll catch hell for that last one.)

Most of these images are meaningful to the individuals who shoot them, and that's fine. But not all of us need to see them. Even if most of us carry some device that captures pictures that can be uploaded to a social media website in mere seconds.

Ellicottville Rodeo potty, (c) DKassnoff, 2014.

We need to be better photo editors. Smartphones run apps that help improve an image, but there aren't many fixes for a backlit, underexposed image. Or a blurry concert shot, where the featured performer was 200 feet away and looks like a Lego figure in your image.

Those images don't tell me a story.

This photo is one example. I was shooting a rodeo, and a rider got thrown from his horse. There's action in this picture, but the "decisive moment" means it's not worthy. And the row of porta-potties in the background is a buzz-kill.

There's no story here.

Fierce rider. (c) DKassnoff, 2014.

The photo at left? A little better. You see the rider's face, the force of the bucking horse.

There's a story here. And no porta-potties in the background.