Photo by Nicole Ethridge Brown, of her daughter.

Photo by Nicole Ethridge Brown, of her daughter.

 

Every day, on my facebook page, I post a Fan Photo of the Day. Today’s photo by Nchole Ethridge Brown is getting, by far, our most significant response ever, in terms of Facebook “Likes,” shares and comments—about ten times more than our average day! So congratulations, Nicole, for capturing a moment that so clearly speaks to people. Here are the words I included about the photo:

Every once in a while you look through the camera and you say something like this to your self, “ I could be wrong but I think I may be hitting the ball out of the park here.” Well, Nicole, if that’s what you were thinking you were certainly right. Holy smoke! It’s such a good feeling to have a camera at your eye and see something that looks this good. What glorious fun it must have been to push the button. I’m so jealous. Do you have any idea how many photographers have photographed kids in a plowed field and never taken this picture?

And, after comments started coming in asking about the photograph—with several challenging the scene’s authenticity—Nicole filled in the details:

This is very much a real photo of my 3.5 year old daughter playing in the field behind our house a few weeks ago. I’d already taken about a hundred shots of her playing in the dirt, “planting” flowers and burying her feet when she decided to sprawl out and enjoy the sun on her face. I didn’t pose her other than to tell her to cross her ankles and “don’t move,” haha. This isn’t straight out of the camera; there were some adjustments made in post processing, but I personally don’t think that makes this photo any less amazing and I’m really proud of it. Thank you so much for all the kind words!

Here is my take on the conversation about setting up photographs. I think you really need to be careful if you’re going to declare that someone has set up a photograph. In my career, I’ve set up photographs that look completely spontaneous and I’ve taken spontaneous moment photographs and have been accused of setting them up.

 

My most vivid example of that was when I was in journalism school and was covering the local mayoral election which was a really heated and nasty political race. I ended up at the home of the guy who finally won and was there when he found out that he had actually done it and photographed him and his wife hugging and kissing and crying in front of a big pile of campaign banners and political signs in their living room. It was really a good photograph. I shot one frame. I was very proud of it. The local newspaper ran the photograph on the front page huge.

 

And I had pulled this off in an extremely competitive environment with all of the other photography students who would have killed to have taken that photograph. (The picture was almost half of the front page.)

 

The problem was, it was almost too good to be true. It was simple and told the story perfectly and had a major dose of real live human emotion to it. But it was so simple and perfect that it did in fact look like it was set up. LIke I said, it was too good to be true.

 

Anyway, the head of the photography department held up the front page of the paper the next day in class—I wasn’t there—and said Kelsh has really done it this time. This is so obviously a setup photograph, he said. Anybody could set this picture up. I took a lot of heat for it.

 

You walk a fine line when you jump to the conclusion that someone has set up photograph. That is certainly been my experience. You need to be very careful. You also need to be kind about it.

 

And then there is the very gray area of about exactly what a setup photograph is. Is a photograph set up if you tell someone not to move? Or cross their ankles?  If you work at the New York Times that’s a problem. If you’re photographing your family I’m not so sure that it’s very simply something a really good photographer would do.

 

Totally love this picture.

 

Nick

If you’d like to see my Fan Photo of the Day, it is included in my Daily Photo Tip email which you can have delivered to your inbox each morning by entering your email below.