What Separates a Good Photo From One That Makes You Better

You can shoot thousands of frames in a busy wedding season and still struggle to name the few that pushed your work forward. Separating the images that pleased a client from the ones that changed how you shoot is a useful habit, and it takes more honesty than most portfolio reviews ask for.

Ontario-based Chris Tellez pulls up his Lightroom catalogs for the year and admits that only a small slice of those frames feel like real growth, even though his clients got plenty of strong work. His first pick is a winter roadside scene he spotted while driving with only his phone on hand. He knew the light would be gone by the time he got home, so he spent the next few days watching the weather and waiting for a sunny afternoon that matched what he saw. The result is clean and sharp, with color contrast that stops short of a punchy, high-contrast look, and Tellez calls it technically fine without being anything special. He counts it anyway, because he saw a picture he wanted and went back to get it. That kind of follow-through is easy to skip when nobody is paying for the shot.

The second set of images came from a personal project with a clear goal. Tellez wanted to photograph his favorite singer-songwriter, so he built a series around one of the musician's songs, using a friend as his subject, and planned to show it during a conversation with the artist's touring agent. He wrote an outline, worked out how to translate the song's meaning into pictures, and had to explain that vision to the people helping on the day. He says this kind of concept-first work is something he's done less of while focused on growing his business. The pitch worked. He got 10 minutes with the musician in Red Deer, Alberta, and one frame from that session is a straight-on portrait lit with a single speedlight and shot on the Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.2 Aspherical. What draws him to it is the push and pull between a bright, playful shirt and a more somber expression, and he's open about what he'd change with more time.

Going back for a scene you saw without a camera gets easier with a little planning. Apps such as PhotoPills and The Photographer's Ephemeris show where the sun will rise, set, and sit in the sky for any date and location, so you can work out which afternoon puts the light back where you remember it. In winter, the sun stays low for much of the day in places like southern Ontario, which stretches the window for long shadows and warm side light, though the angle also shifts noticeably from week to week. A quick phone snapshot works as a scouting note even when the image itself is throwaway, since the file records the time and, with location services on, the GPS coordinates. Log these spots as you find them, and you build a private list of shots waiting for the right conditions. The personal project runs on similar thinking. A finished series tied to one subject shows a potential client or collaborator exactly how you think, which a scattered portfolio can't always do.

The wedding picks carry practical lessons of their own. At his favorite venue, Cranberry Creek Gardens, Tellez pulled a couple aside late at night for about five minutes in front of a twinkling tree, and the moody result reminded him of the HBO series Carnivàle. He framed the shot around the groom on purpose, since the couple had been through a lot on the way to their wedding and he wanted both of them to feel celebrated. He also admits how easy it is to rush when you're worried about eating into a couple's time, which leads to safe frames instead of the ones you set out to make. Asking for a few extra minutes got him the image. His last example comes from a Toronto City Hall wedding, where a patch of harsh overhead light by a bank of elevators caught his eye while the couple stepped away. He chose to stay and work it with no modifiers before heading out to the city's better-known spots.

Watch the video above to see how Tellez turned that elevator light into a portrait and to hear his full reasoning behind each frame.