I take a ridiculous amount of photos. 28,000 in our 8 month sabbatical to be precise, 120 per day on average. I just thought it was worth owning up that most of my photos are pretty poor, but thankfully, you only need one good one. I was desperately trying not to make this an epic humble brag, but upon conclusion I have failed. However, lots of people have asked me how this photo came about, so here's all the mistakes and brutal editing that led to one nice photo.
You only ever see 1% of my photos, as it takes so many failed attempts to get the one I want, and most of the time I never get that one I want. This photo that won National Geographic Traveller Magazine's competition was one of the rare occasions where it all worked out, and I immediately knew I'd got a good one.
As soon as we saw this procession of colourful locals in Bagan in Myanmar, Clauds and I immediately lost each other and went into our own wee photographic worlds. Half an hour later, I'd taken around 200 photos. Fighting through the crowd to get the best angle and an alternative view point is half the battle, and then I just kept taking photos until things fell into place and a beautiful woman walked into a shaft of sunlight that was squeezing through the adjacent buildings. Even then, the only good part of the photo was her face, so I literally cut out some of the excess rubbish, and positioned her face using the wonderful rule of thirds.
Most of my photos aren't very good, so here's the other 18 photos I took that evening that didn't win awards, and never will either. The other 182 I took were immediately deleted, not even worthy of reflection.
You can buy prints of the nice one here if you reeeeaaaally like it.
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