From time to time, usually after reading a Robert Adams book about photography, I try shooting non-human subjects in black and white. I never know what to do with them when I finish the inevitable post processing....

A random planter at Spring Condominium. Flowers; succulents. 

Once you've decided that you want to show a scene how do you decide between all the permutations you end up shooting? Which one gets the nod?

There's a wall just off Congress Avenue, on Fifth Street, that has a long wall and an ever changing mural. It's always interesting but sometimes it's better than others. I was walking by, across the street from the mural yesterday when it caught my eye. I photographed it from the corner (an angled view) and also straight on as in these two examples. I photographed it with and without people. And I photographed it with and without cars. It sounds like a bunch of permutations but I think I shot the whole collection of 13 or 14 variations in the space of 3 or 4 minutes. 

When I'm out shooting around town I always tend to shoot multiple variation of interesting scenes, when time and the situation allows. But I always struggle in the editing because it's hard for me, sometimes, to declare one image to be better than all the rest. Each has something a bit different which catches my eye, otherwise I would not have continued to take photographs. 

Usually the difference has something to do with the composition but in this situation I think the choice between these two images is more down to gesture more than anything else. I'm curious to know how you make a choice when you have half a dozen or a dozen images from the same basic set up, all of which you find interesting for different reasons.

I was using a camera that I haven't paid enough attention to previously; it's the Fuji XE3. I wanted to walk around as unencumbered as possible and I wanted to carry an extra lens and battery in a Jacket pocket. Turns out the XE3 with it's small size and light weight was just what I wanted. I mostly kept the 35mm f2.0 lens on the front; it's very small, light and sharp (even at f2.0) but I carried the 50mm f2.0 in my left jacket pocket leaving room in the right pocket for a vegan lemon and hazelnut scone from Whole Foods. 

I shoot more than I ever end up using and I've learned to divide the take into: keepers, maybes and instant trash. The percentage varies but usually less than 5% of the photos from a two or three hour walk through the city are keepers. Another 5% are maybes and the rest never get ingested into Lightroom or stored anywhere. They just cease to exist the next time I format the memory card. This is a good discipline for me since I seem to be hesitant to pick favorites. 

If I saved every frame I shot I'd have millions of image cluttering up an endless array of hard drives. If I knew which keeper I wanted to distill down to I could save even more space. Some images you just have to live with before you really know if you want them. The rest are pretty obviously crappy. You do yourself a favor when you flush them out of the system....