Print, not so much. As such I’ve done a lot of grumbling. After ten years of seeing photos only on the screen, I wanted the exact same crispness on paper. No, actually I wanted it better then that. People were paying for that photo on paper.

My friend April Alsup, a fellow photographer who is gracious enough to endure my endless questions once told me that I needed to relax. And then I needed to allow the photos to relax. “Prints are a softer, more magical depiction of the captured memory. As such, let them be.”

Does this mean I shouldn’t strive for those crisp lines that I love so much? Absolutely not. Every photo I take I’m trying to learn how to get that better ‘in camera’ because this will ultimately give me that magic on paper as well.

But what it does is remind me that not everything has to be so absolute to be right, to be a good photo. It reminds me that sometimes the magic is in the softness, in the soft lines.

Now most of the time I am the only one that will ever even know that the eye color is captured. Especially with the types of shots that I do – sports/action. The end product isn’t a close up profile photo. It’s action, all about the action. But I try really hard, even with the kids moving, to focus in on their eyes. So I can’t tell you how cool it is to see progress, to see more and more times then not, the color of their eyes when I blow up their photos.

This is the cropped version of the photo you’ll see below. It is blown up 100%. It’s not perfect. There’s still noise but it’s a decent shot. The thing I’m noting today though is… you can see the beautiful brown color of her eyes.

This shot looks like a still, but for her to be lined up between the players she already is in action to shot, thus it’s an action shot.