How do you know when you’ve got the best shot?

Scott A Woodward

“It’s like asking yourself how you know when you’re truly in love”

Scott A Woodward calls his photographic style ‘Choose your own Adventure Photography” after the books he read as a child in which the reader selects the flow of the narrative. “Serendipity is the beauty of photography” he says.

Scott’s style is diverse, but the images that I’m really drawn to are those in his travel photography series. Bhutan, Japan, Indonesia, North Korea – so many haunting portraits of people who live so close to me, yet apparently a universe apart. It’s comforting to know that there are still some corners of the world in which Instagram and smashed avocadoes on toasted sourdough have not yet penetrated. And it’s thanks to Scott’s photography that I know this.

Scott’s twice been honoured by Luerzer's Archive as one of the "200 Best Advertising Photographers Worldwide" and chosen by Nikon as “One of Asia’s Finest Photographers”. His photography features regularly in a wide variety of publications including National Geographic Magazine, GEO, Condé Nast Traveller, Travel + Leisure, Monocle, Esquire, Vogue, GQ, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Which is a lot of impressive awards. So, Scott, how do you know when you’ve got the best shot?

There are countless rules to making great photographs.

Scott A Woodward, A Curate's Egg Pinjarra, Australia

From the obvious basic compositional guidelines, such as the rule of thirds and Robert Capa’s famous adage, “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” to the more esoteric principles of diagonals, leading lines and golden triangles. But like all rules, the fundamentals of composition are there to be bent (and broken). And besides the technicals, beauty and art are so subjective that it’s difficult to conclude with any authority that a photograph could ever be “the best”. So, how *do* you know when you’ve got the best shot? I suppose it’s all of the above and more. It’s a lot of practice. It’s a little patience. It’s heaps of repetition. Often it takes planning. And sometimes it’s just luck. But mostly it’s a feeling. It’s like asking yourself how you know when you’re truly in love. You just know.

Scott A Woodward, A Curate's Egg Bayan-Ulgii, Mongolia