As I looked through this month’s photos I was reminded of a question I sometimes get: “how much do I plan out a photo ahead of time”. For me it varies a lot, some photos involve a lot of pre-planning and sometimes even staging. A product shot, for instance, may be precisely planned. But a lot of my photos are a mix of some idea in my head and then rolling with whatever unfolds. And sometimes photos are completely spontaneous. One thing that can help your photography is to try out a variety of different approaches. You may well find that you’re drawn to a particular approach. But practicing a variety of them will broaden your options out.

We have a great set of photos this month. And I also want to point out the comments people are submitting. The moments you see below where light, composition and everything else line up can happen so suddenly that we need to be able to react quickly. The comments people are writing are great examples of the kind of thinking that will help them be ready to react quickly in the future. Studying the expressions, light, backgrounds,… they love in these photos will prepare them to see similar elements again in the future. And they’ll do the same for you if you study the elements you love in these photos as well as your own. I hope you find great inspiration in this months work!

I’m excited that this month’s photos really show off the power of lighting. One of the best ways to learn lighting is to look at a lot of photos and study the light. Practice finding where the light came from- looking at shadows and bright areas for clues. That practice will help build up your instincts for how different kinds of light will work in your photos. And by studying where the light came from you’ll have a feel for how to create a similar effect. So for these photos, before you read the comments I hope you’ll study each photo and think about where the sun was.

This month’s assignment was a challenge. Camera manufacturers have tried to make flash easier to use by creating lots of different modes. It’s made it hard on many cameras to figure out how to select what traditionally has been called “fill flash”. I know many readers struggled because of this- but it’s exciting to see everyone hang in there and learn more about their cameras. And I hope it got everyone thinking more about light. We’ll start off talking about Vonnie’s photos which do a great job of showing us how different flash modes impact the look of a photo.

It’s so inspiring to start out the year seeing our photographers experiment with lots of ideas this month. It’s scary to move outside our comfort zone, and even scarier to do it in front of an audience and to write about the challenges. Thanks so much to our photographers for putting themselves out there so that we can all learn from them. I’m sure we’ve got lots of readers who are inspired by your work and also discovering they’re far from alone in the challenges to becoming stronger photographers. And your questions are inspiring lots of future column ideas for me- Thanks! And if you haven’t submitted photos yet, please consider doing it- it’ll help all of us learn and build a stronger community This month a number of comments related to the process of photography. So I thought I’d focus most of my comments on process. Vonnie starts us off with a technique for getting past frustration.

I think this is my favorite assignment so far. It really gets at the heart of what I think photography is about- communicating emotion and meaning. Books and classes often emphasize technique and composition. These are important; they help us express what we want to say more clearly, more powerfully. But I love that Vonnie noted in her comment that she picked an image that had deep meaning for her, even though she has plenty of other images that were stronger from a purely technical standpoint. Emotion won. The ability to find meaningful and emotional moments is its own skill. We can develop it – one way to grow it is to become more aware of what makes an image meaningful to you. As you look through these images, see which ones have the most impact on you and then try to figure out why. Thanks to everyone who submitted for sending such meaningful images and for your comments which add a lot to this - I sure went through a range of emotions viewing this set.

Thanks so much to all our photographers this month for helping us all to both enjoy your photographs and to learn from you. This month’s assignment was to experiment with cropping and different aspect ratios and I’m really excited about the results. Each photographer clearly made a conscious choice about where to put the edges of the frame. As viewers that encourages us to consider what each element in the frame means as it is clear the photographer included them on purpose. A tiny element that we might discount in a photograph that seems less precisely managed can take on lots of meaning in these photographs that feel crafted. Also we have examples of vertical, square and horizontal aspect ratios here. Notice how those shapes impact your feeling of each image. Imagine how your experience of the photo would change had the photographer chosen a different aspect ratio. Webmaster's note: Because of the size limitations of the website photo gallery, the photos will all appear square, by clicking on them to further enlarge, you will be able to view the different aspect ratios that were used.

Thanks so much for the great October photo submissions. I want to lead this off by making a plug for submitting your own photos if you aren’t already. It’s a gift for all of us who get to enjoy your work and to learn from you. And the process of picking and submitting images is a great learning process. I’d love to see this community grow. We’re discussing different ways to both grow the community and make it easier to share. If you have ideas please drop me a note. This month’s assignment was to add another element of story into a photo. Check out how each photographer approached this differently from Al using a tight shot that is also multi-layered to Talia and Janine’s beach scenes to Vonnie’s quiet moment in a backyard. I hope their work inspires you to both try what they did and to submit it to us!

This month’s assignment was to do a close up portrait that shows off eyes. And I’m very excited about the photos we got. As you look at the photos notice how different every photo feels even though they all share a lot in common. Everyone did a great job of getting light into their subjects eyes but notice subtle differences in angle of light and quality of light change how the eyes look. And notice how subtle background details add so much. Since there’s not a lot of background in any of these, the little that is there is more significant.

This month’s assignment was to create an un-posed photo using natural light. One of the exciting things for me was to see the how much of the personality of everyone’s four legged friends came through. And something I’d encourage all of you to do as you look at these photos is to think about how you’d describe the personality of each dog or cat. And then think about what is conveying that - a look in the eye, a gesture of body, a turn of ear,etc. So often those little details communicate so much and the more sensitive we are them the more we can convey them in our photographs.

Thanks so much to everyone who shared their photos with us!