Tiger Shark On Aliwal Shoal, Nikon D200, 12 - 24 Nikkor at 14mm, 1/160s f4

Increasingly I am referring to Thom Hogan’s excellent site for a perspective on all things photographic, from lens choice to matters of technique and photography practice. One of his more recent articles is titled ‘What’s your goal?’, and as the title suggests, it puts the case forward for why it is important for photographers on all levels to set goals against which to measure their development and achievements over the year. Thom’s goals are as follows:

Let me tell you mine for the coming year: take six photographs that I’ll print at 24” and sell in limited quantity as signed prints. That’s it. Take six photographs. Take six photographs that’ll withstand being pushed to 24” with current print technologies. Take six photographs that’ll withstand being pushed to 24” with current print technologies and which some number of people will find good enough to pay significant money to get one of those signed, limited edition prints. Take six photographs that’ll withstand being pushed to 24” with current print technologies and which some number of people will find good enough to pay significant money to get and which I’ll be proud to say represent my best work ever.

This strikes me as very good advice, and I intend to work on a set of goals for myself for the rest of the year, which I will publish and thereby make myself accountable to delivering them. I particularly like the simplicity of Thom’s goal, a simplicity which clearly belies a lot of complexity and hard work.

The image posted above is of a large female tiger shark on Aliwal Shoal, and is one of my favourite in the current series, largely because of the negative space in the image and the almost vertical swimming position of the tiger shark in the water column, a posture which I feel is strongly characteristic of the tiger shark. I suspect this image would have to be blown up really big, A1 or A0 to be really effective, so I intend to do some print tests when I get back to Cape Town to check my suspicions. One of my goals next year on the product side is to release a series of limited edition prints as a way of testing the commercial viability and appeal of my images, and to learn more about what sells and what is popular, but more about that later.