So, I’ve been doing photography as both a hobby and side profession for about five years now. I’m sometimes asked what my best photograph is. Longtime Herald Times readers will no-doubt be familiar with my photograph of the Monroe County courthouse with a lightning strike in the background. Without a doubt, it’s the most visited photo on my smugmug account and I heard a bizarre story about a friend happening upon a conference in Las Vegas where a speaker from the Pacific Northwest was using it in a powerpoint slide.

So, yeah. You might think that’s my favorite. But it isn’t.

I’m rather fond of this photograph of an American flag hanging in a window of a closed up shop in Madison,Indiana. Being in the downtown, it signified the simultaneous American dream of small business ownership, and the American collective choice to destroy that dream by ignoring Main Street and buying in the outlying “shopping donut”.

But that’s not my favorite photo either.

I constantly go back to this shot of Bok Tower in Florida. The clouds were a beautiful contrast to the deep blue hue of the sky. The tower itself is an interesting story, rising so gloriously out of the Florida flatlands, looking misplaced amongst the sprawl and neatly trimmed lawns. The angle of the photograph makes it look ever more impressive, and the duo-tone treatment I gave the photograph provides a very distinct contrast that both obscures and highlights the treeline in the lower right. The tower is purposefully cropped off the top edge to give the impression that there’s more to it.

I take pride in all three of these images. They’re all fine photographs that (to me anyway) deserve to be listed in my top ten favorite images. But none of them carries the same weight, or the same meaning as the following image.

Technically, it’s not that interesting of a photograph. The ISO is pushed way too high and the framing is off on the original shot. I added some strong vignetting in the corners to focus attention to the middle of the shot. I had to punch the colors up and correct them a bit because the tungsten lighting rendered a bit too yellow-ish. It’s sharp, but it could be better.

But, it’s clearly, the most important image in my collection. The subject: my 3-minute old daughter who opened her eyes for the first time to see me and grab my hand. I can’t think of a more pleasing image than that in all the stock photo archives, art museums, and online galleries in the world….