Pictures of the Day: Spain and Elsewhere

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Photos from Spain, Mali, Brazil and India.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.

Pictures of the Day: Bahrain and Elsewhere

Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '

Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '

Searching for Hope and Humanity in L.A.

Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '

Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '

Pictures of the Day: China and Elsewhere

Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '

Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '

Photographing the Part of Buddhism That Can\'t Be Seen

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

When David Butow decided to spend 2012 traveling the world to photograph Buddhism, he knew there would be a rich abundance of visual material: colorful clothing, vibrant decorations and precisely choreographed rituals.

But the challenge of capturing the essence of spiritual experience became apparent to him quickly. While sacred rites are visually lush, and obvious, spiritual experience is interior and hidden - and it is difficult to photograph something that is not visible.

Mr. Butow used a variety of strategies - and camera formats - to try to capture the heart of Buddhism. He layered reflections, employed camera motion and made metaphoric images that suggested stillness. He included double exposures, used diptychs and even physically altered negatives with a small blade.

His journey last year, as he worked on “Seeing Buddha: A Photographic Journey,” spanned 10 countries including Bhutan, Cambodia, Japan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India. Along the way, he discovered that Buddhism and photography have much in common, including observation, empathy and being fully in the moment.

David Butow A monk performed “walking meditation” in a forest in Sri Lanka where he lives with other monks. There is a tradition of monks spending years in the forest away from material goods and other distractions that could disrupt their quest for spiritual enlightenment.

“Among the core concepts of Buddhism is the idea of understanding your individual experience of living and the way that you are connected to other people,” he said. “As a photographer, you observe your subject, try to become connected and then capture that in a single moment.”

Mr. Butow started the project after many years as a photojournalist who often covered conflicts and disasters for U.S. News and World Report, as well as for the photo agencies Saba and Redux. He said that empathy in the face of suffering and a sense of shared humanity were important both in photography and in Buddhism.

So, too, is patience.

He recalled photographing a small group of monks for two or three hours while they were chanting, but not moving at all. Finally, there was one moment in which light came through the window and illuminated a monk (Slide 2). Mr. Butow can't know exactly what the monk was thinking or experiencing, but the image reflects what the photographer perceived.

“Perhaps that's all I could do,” he said. “The pictures are as much a reflection of my own experience as they are of the people who are in the shot.”

David Butow Schoolgirls sipped ceremonial tea in Kyoto, Japan.

Follow @DavidButow, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.

Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Photos from Syria, Jordan, Egypt and China.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.

Rugby Rehabilitation in an Argentine Prison

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

After finishing an emotionally wrenching project on children with leukemia, Rosario Heer wanted to photograph something lighter. A chance meeting with Diego Claisse, a rugby coach, got her to thinking: Wouldn't it be nice to spend time taking pictures of rich kids tussling on the field at one of Buenos Aires's exclusive rugby clubs?

When she asked Mr. Claisse if she could go with him to the club, he agreed. But then he made an offhand comment: he also coached a rugby team composed of convicts.

“I wanted the jail!” Ms. Heer recalled. “I always get attracted to those kinds of stories. Why did he have to say that to me? I knew that if I was photographing the rich kids, I would have been wondering what was going on in the jail.”

So, before she took a single frame, her project went from looking at Argentina's elites to spending five months with felons serving time at the Unidad Penitenciaría de San Martín, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The result is “Try,” a peek at the lives of Los Spartanos, men behind bars who find a measure of release, brotherhood and hope playing a rough-and-tumble sport that is more popular on the other side of the world than in soccer-mad Argentina.

Rosario Heer Santiago, 20, is one of the youngest members of the team. The oldest is 56.

Ms. Heer arrived at the prison last year with Mr. Claisse and Eduardo Oderigo, a lawyer who founded the club three years ago almost on a do-good impulse. She had no idea what she was getting into, though her first steps into open-air sections of the complex didn't seem so daunting - at first.

“I was a bit paralyzed,” she said. “The first part, I felt free, in a sense. But you start to feel trapped because everyone is looking at you, from the guards to the prisoners. And, I'm claustrophobic. It was not a great combination. Well, who told me to go to jail?”

That first day, she had a chance to present her project to the members of the rugby team, who for the last two years have lived in their own cellblock. The unit attracts those who want to play rugby, as well as prisoners who are sent there for good behavior and wind up helping the team. The cellblock has some comforts absent in other parts of the jail, like a television, video games and table tennis.

She said her proposal to photograph the team was received well, since the men wanted to show a different side of prison life. They knew that because of their crimes, the outside world would judge them as undesirable. But they saw in Ms. Heer a chance to humanize themselves and their situation.

Granted, the fact that they played rugby instead of soccer itself gave them a certain reputation among the other inmates.

“Rugby has a lot of contact, and to outsiders it looks like they are killing each other,” Ms. Heer said. “If you know how to play, it's not as hard as it seems. But from the outside, it looks like they are the rude boys of the jail, so no one gets near them.”

Rosario Heer Carlitos has been part of the team since it started. He wants his child to play rugby in the future.

Though she wanted to get close to the rugby players, Ms. Heer chose not to ask why they were in prison or even how long they were sentenced. She thought that kind of information would alter how she looked at them, or even scare her. If anything, the inmates took pains to be courteous around her, even scolding others who spit or swore.

The team practiced with their coaches, and in front of Ms. Heer, on Tuesday mornings. On Fridays, they practiced without Ms. Heer. Every three months, they played another team, and not always in jail - a judge sometimes allowed them to travel to a match.

The first game Ms. Heer photographed was between Los Spartanos and a team of judges and lawyers. No one on either side recognized one another.

“One of Los Spartanos asked if they let the judges win would they get early release,” she said. “It was a fun game. They were afraid of taking the ball away from the judges or lawyers.”

Games like this one were also opportunities to reconnect with friends and family, moments treasured by the prisoners. And as part of the game ritual, they shared snacks and conversation with their opponents afterward.

“The captain of Los Spartanos said it had been a long time since he felt as free as he had that day,” Ms. Heer said.

Another game, inside the walls of another prison, had a different tone. The men complained about unfair calls from referees who favored their opponents. Some were petulant, like unruly children, she said. Their coaches took the opportunity to teach Los Spartanos tolerance and restraint.

“ ‘On the field, you are seeing inmates,' ” a coach told them, according to Ms. Heer. “ ‘Once you get out, you are going back to your old neighborhood and see the people who put you in here.' It reminded them they were always going to have these encounters.”

Of the rugby-playing inmates she photographed, Ms. Heer said five had since been released. All five are still free.

“The coaches are doing this not so the prisoners can get out,” she said. “They do it so they won't come back.”

Rosario Heer Rugby, once considered a game for the elite, is increasingly popular in Argentina. It is the only sport played in the prison.

Ms. Heer's project came to our attention by way of FotoVisura.

Follow @rochiheer, @dgbxny and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.

Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Photos from Syria, Indonesia, the Philippines and Spain.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.

Diving for the Winning Shot

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Jabin Botsford, 23, is a freelance photojournalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Getty Images. Originally from West Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Botsford is studying photography and sociology at Western Kentucky University and is a staff photographer at the student newspaper, The College Heights Herald. He completed an internship with The Washington Post in 2012 and is now a photo intern at The New York Times.

His Turning Point conversation with Whitney Richardson has been edited.

Q.

What's happening in this image?

A.

I go to Western Kentucky University, and our basketball team tends to be very hit-or-miss. We hadn't done well in several years, and this was the Sun Belt Tournament in Hot Springs, Ark. At the time, we were ranked seventh out of 10 teams. I went for my student newspaper as a last-minute thing, so me and my friend went during spring break to photograph it. We thought we were going home in two days, but our team just kept winning. There was all of this buildup that we were not supposed to win, with a lot of close calls. We won the last game, barely, by like two points.

The woman's final was just before that, and I went out early to watch how it ended. I wanted to see what they would do if they won, just to get a better idea of what would happen. When they won, they immediately ran to the center of the court, and I figured the guys' game would end the same way. I was standing by the bench with my wide-angle lens ready. As soon as they won, I ran right to the center. The guy in my image was a senior, and it was his last game before graduation. He was the player to capture. I sprinted to the center and literally dove to the floor. I am inches away from him. It was an amazing moment for me.

Q.

How did capturing this image affect your work?

A.

I had a friend that was working at ZUMA Press. After the event, he told me he was interested in the images from the game if my photos were O.K. That night I signed a contract with ZUMA and my photo was on the wire. It got picked up on The Wall Street Journal. It ran small on their blog, but that was the first time I was in front of a larger audience. At that time, I had only been published in a smaller newspaper internship and for my school newspaper.

Q.

What was the response at school to the picture?

A.

We posted the image straight to the Web right after the game, just the photo because the reporters were still writing. A lot of people praised it. It kind of got my name out in school. People started recognizing me as Jabin, that photographer, or that guy who carries his camera around. My classmates are very supportive of each other; it was a lot of support from friends and family.

Sam Abell

Inspiration: Sam Abell
Image: Ken Rosman Ranch in Utica, Mont.

Q.

We recently featured this image in another Turning Point interview with Jared Soares. Why do you think it's such an inspiring image for budding journalists?

A.

In my first photojournalism class we had to pull the names of famous photojournalists out of the hat and we had to study them. I picked Sam Abell. I found this photo and it always stuck in my mind. I really hadn't gone far enough in my career to understand why it was good; I just knew that I liked it. That was until last year, when I heard Sam Abell speak. He spoke about this photo, and it completely changed the way I thought about what goes into a photo. He explained, yes, it is a layered photo, and it is what we all try to do as storytellers.

But then he said, “This photo is really more about the red bucket.”

When he said that, my head kind of exploded. He said that the red bucket was swinging back and forth in the frame, and he spoke about wanting this red bucket because it not only added color to the photo, but it also told something more. It makes me think more about what I have in my photos and more waiting for that thing to happen. Sam Abell is the master of layers, and that is still something that I try to understand and incorporate into my own work.

Q.

What would you say is the difference between what you saw in the image before you heard him speak and after?

A.

Before I heard him speak, to me, it was just this really beautiful image with all of these layers happening. After I heard him speak, it was still that, but he spoke about microcomposing, which is where you compose frames from the back forward. You then fit your subjects together in the frame. In this photo, the guy in the frame is perfectly placed between the guys with the cattle and the two guys in the front are getting ready to brand the cow. Everything leads to the back. Just that whole idea of microcomposing is a really small detail that I realized after I heard him speak. It made me rethink how I composed my frames and how shapes can fit together to better tell a story.

Follow @jabinbotsford, @Whitney_Rich and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.

Starting a Conversation at The Times About Women as News Sources

“The Story of Newspapers”/W. D. Siddle, via Ladybird Books

The illustration from a children's book, published in 1969, says it all about the role of women in newsrooms at that time.

“… The Story of Newspapers â€" before women were invented,” quipped the journalist Graham Carter on Twitter, where it recently made the rounds.

Even in the 1970s, women in most newsrooms were relegated largely to lifestyle sections â€" the “soft” side of the paper. But in the last few decades, the change has been huge. At The Times, Jill Abramson holds the newsroom's top spot as executive editor, the first woman to do so. She has recently named women to roles like national editor, politics editor, culture editor and editor of the Book Review. And a look at The Times's editorial page shows a news-side masthead â€" the newspaper's ranking editors â€" that includes four men and four women. On the opinion side, the editor is a man and his two top deputies are women.

But what about the content of the paper? Has that diversified at the same pace?

A new study from the University of Nevada suggests that it hasn't â€" or at least that the sources in front-page articles remain largely male. The study looks at two months of front-page Times articles and finds men quoted three times more than women. That's worth thinking about. Poynter.org offers a deeper look at the study and some reporting about it by those who worked on it: The journalist Alicia Shepard and one of her students, Alexi Layton.  Another student, Rochelle Richards, contributed to the research.  Later in the week, Amanda Hess offered her point of view in Slate.

I talked with Susan Chira, an assistant managing editor, about the study, and about whether The Times will and should make any changes. Ms. Chira â€" a former Metro reporter and foreign correspondent who became the first female foreign editor of The Times â€" said the results of the study gave her pause. (Ms. Chira is also the author of “A Mother's Place,” on working motherhood in America.)

“The numbers are certainly not optimal,” she said of the study. “There have got to be a lot more women worthy of quoting.” That's true, she said, despite the fact that more newsmakers â€" politicians, business people, government officials â€" are male, and thus more likely to be in a position to be called as sources.

But, she said, she dislikes the idea of a mandate or quota for including more women. And she said some of the response to the study was overwrought.

Quotas or mandates would “result in tokenism that sets us all back,” she said. “The answer has to come from awareness. This is a consciousness issue. How do you get reporters to ask themselves if they have made a stringent enough effort to include women in this story? How do reporters expand their bank of go-to people that they rely on as sources?”

After I asked her about the study this week, Ms. Chira discussed the issue briefly with Ms. Abramson and with Dean Baquet, the managing editor. As a result, Ms. Chira said she will informally go around to section editors and heads of the various desks to make them aware of the study and suggest that they encourage assigning editors and reporters to widen their scope to include more women.

I'm not sure that's going to make much of a difference, but I also dislike the idea of anything mandated.

Dana Canedy, a senior editor who heads a newsroom task force on diversity, said she expects that the group will have recommendations to top editors on the sourcing issue. “It's imperative that we as journalists draw on those who reflect what this country looks like â€" women are not separate on this issue,” she said.

The study is limited, but it's interesting. Talking about it may cause some resistance â€" and some eye rolling.  “Your story quotes only men â€" go find a couple of women,” is a conversation that's hard to imagine going over too well at The Times or in any newsroom.  But those conversations may result in positive change: articles with a broader base of information and perspective.

Diversity for the sake of improving numbers is meaningless, an empty piece of political correctness. But diversity for the sake of including sources beyond the usual suspects â€" who bring different experiences and points of view â€" is well worth the effort.

Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

Why did Nate Silver decide to leave The New York Times and accept an offer from ESPN?

That's the cause of great speculation in media circles at the moment. As has been noted elsewhere, there's no question that The Times made a big pitch to keep him and that the effort to do so involved those at the highest levels, including Jill Abramson, the executive editor, along with people on the business side. And there's no doubt that decision-makers are disappointed.

After all, his star power was significant. And his ability to drive traffic â€" especially among young, non-newspaper readers with his FiveThirtyEight blog â€" was unmatched, and probably will remain so.

I don't have a great deal of inside information about how he made up his mind. But I did get to know Nate a bit. I visited with him at his second-floor desk a few times, interviewed him in person and by phone, mildly criticized one thing he did, and â€" notably - was mentioned very kindly in a Twitter message of his when I was under attack for that criticism.

This was true outside of the newsroom as well. In March, when I ran into him at the South by Southwest digital media convention in Austin, Tex., Nate was nice enough to stand around and chat at some length with a couple of young journalists I was with who admired him.

In short, I found him a thoroughly decent person, generous with his time and more likely than not to take the high road in personal interactions.

I also had many conversations about him with journalists in The Times's newsroom.

So, without promising any huge amount of insight, I'll make a few observations:

* I don't think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture and I think he was aware of that. He was, in a word, disruptive. Much like the Brad Pitt character in the movie “Moneyball” disrupted the old model of how to scout baseball players, Nate disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics.

His entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race, campaign coverage, analysis based on campaign-trail observation, and opinion writing, or “punditry,” as he put it, famously describing it as “fundamentally useless.” Of course, The Times is equally known for its in-depth and investigative reporting on politics.

His approach was to work against the narrative of politics â€" the “story” â€" and that made him always interesting to read. For me, both of these approaches have value and can live together just fine.

* A number of traditional and well-respected Times journalists disliked his work. The first time I wrote about him I suggested that print readers should have the same access to his writing that online readers were getting. I was surprised to quickly hear by e-mail from three high-profile Times political journalists, criticizing him and his work. They were also tough on me for seeming to endorse what he wrote, since I was suggesting that it get more visibility.

Many others, of course, in The Times's newsroom did appreciate his work and the innovation (not to mention the traffic) that he brought, and liked his humility.

* The Times tried very hard to give him a lot of editorial help and a great platform. It bent over backward to do so, and this, too, disturbed some staff members. It was about to devote a significant number of staff positions to beefing up his presence into its own mini-department.

Nate Silver hasn't talked publicly about his decision yet.  I do know, from talking to a number of Times staff members over the past several weeks, that he was weighing the decision carefully and that it seemed, for a while, as if he would stay. This was far from a snap decision.

I suspect that this question of feeling at home in the Times culture was a relatively small factor. The deciding elements more likely were money, a broader variety of platforms and the opportunity to concentrate on sports and entertainment, as well as politics. It all added up to a better package â€" a better fit - at ESPN, and last week he told The Times of his plans.

Are some at The Times gratified by his departure? No doubt. But others are sorry to see him go. Count me among those.

In Real Time, Calling for Anthony Weiner to Step Out of the Mayor\'s Race

We've all heard of fast-breaking stories but something relatively new in the newspaper world is the fast-breaking editorial.

The Times is doing more of that these days â€" posting editorials expressing the paper's institutional opinion in real time rather than waiting until the next day's paper.

Few instances have been as notable as one on Tuesday, when about three hours after Anthony D. Weiner's news conference, The Times had written and published an editorial calling for him to remove himself from New York City's mayoral race.

The editorial began: “At some point, the full story of Anthony Weiner and his sexual relationships and texting habits will finally be told. In the meantime, the serially evasive Mr. Weiner should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City.”

I asked Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, about this practice, which runs counter to the stereotype of tweedy and bespectacled editorial writers deliberating and arguing for long hours over the news in the morning paper for comment (at earliest) the next day.

He said the editorial board had started, during the 2012 campaign, to put editorials online as soon as they were ready rather than wait for an 11 p.m. deadline as the print edition went to bed.

“We started speeding up,” he said. “We began to put them up when we had them ready.”

The recent, major Supreme Court decisions on the Voting Rights Act and the Defense of Marriage Act were among those news stories to get this kind of immediate comment.

“We just feel like when people are focused on a big story, that's the time to weigh in,” he said. Editorials, at that moment, “get more attention and have more impact.”

With Tuesday's development on Mr. Weiner, he said, “we started talking about it earlier in the day” when news sites started to forecast a major development. At that point, writing something for possible use later seemed premature, he said.

But given the news conference and what Mr. Rosenthal saw as Mr. Weiner's “contemptuous attitude,” he felt that “this had gotten to the point of craziness.”

Making a strong statement “seemed legitimate at that moment.”

This practice requires fast decision-making followed by fast writing, fact-checking and editing. “We compress and speed up the process,” Mr. Rosenthal said. In the case of the Weiner editorial, that also involved checking with the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., to make sure he was on board. He was.

Once the editorial is posted, the inexorable world of Internet commenting begins, and sometimes outside  reaction means the editorial will be adjusted before going into its final, print form. Last month, the Twitter world was critical of a change in an editorial about President Obama's credibility on the government's phone data collection, making much of The Times's apparent softening of its position.

“That was an instance in which it became clear that people were misreading what we intended to say so we clarified it,” Mr. Rosenthal said. I wrote about that in this blog, suggesting that â€" given the strength of the original statement and the strong reaction to it â€" the change should have been explained very briefly to the reader. Mr. Rosenthal disagreed, saying the change was only meant for clarity and didn't need an explanation.

The real-time posting of editorials is a good development and one that, so far, has served Times readers well.

But what's next? Will editorials soon be sent out on Twitter in 140-character increments?

“That's not my intention,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “You have to think about the best way to say something. This is already pretty fast.”

Diving for the Winning Shot

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Jabin Botsford, 23, is a freelance photojournalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Getty Images. Originally from West Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Botsford is studying photography and sociology at Western Kentucky University and is a staff photographer at the student newspaper, The College Heights Herald. He completed an internship with The Washington Post in 2012 and is now a photo intern at The New York Times.

His Turning Point conversation with Whitney Richardson has been edited.

Q.

What’s happening in this image?

A.

I go to Western Kentucky University, and our basketball team tends to be very hit-or-miss. We hadn’t done well in several years, and this was the Sun Belt Tournament in Hot Springs, Ark. At the time, we were ranked seventh out of 10 teams. I went for my student newspaper as a last-minute thing, so me and my friend went during spring break to photograph it. We thought we were going home in two days, but our team just kept winning. There was all of this buildup that we were not supposed to win, with a lot of close calls. We won the last game, barely, by like two points.

The woman’s final was just before that, and I went out early to watch how it ended. I wanted to see what they would do if they won, just to get a better idea of what would happen. When they won, they immediately ran to the center of the court, and I figured the guys’ game would end the same way. I was standing by the bench with my wide-angle lens ready. As soon as they won, I ran right to the center. The guy in my image was a senior, and it was his last game before graduation. He was the player to capture. I sprinted to the center and literally dove to the floor. I am inches away from him. It was an amazing moment for me.

Q.

How did capturing this image affect your work?

A.

I had a friend that was working at ZUMA Press. After the event, he told me he was interested in the images from the game if my photos were O.K. That night I signed a contract with ZUMA and my photo was on the wire. It got picked up on The Wall Street Journal. It ran small on their blog, but that was the first time I was in front of a larger audience. At that time, I had only been published in a smaller newspaper internship and for my school newspaper.

Q.

What was the response at school to the picture?

A.

We posted the image straight to the Web right after the game, just the photo because the reporters were still writing. A lot of people praised it. It kind of got my name out in school. People started recognizing me as Jabin, that photographer, or that guy who carries his camera around. My classmates are very supportive of each other; it was a lot of support from friends and family.

Sam Abell

Inspiration: Sam Abell
Image: Ken Rosman Ranch in Utica, Mont.

Q.

We recently featured this image in another Turning Point interview with Jared Soares. Why do you think it’s such an inspiring image for budding journalists?

A.

In my first photojournalism class we had to pull the names of famous photojournalists out of the hat and we had to study them. I picked Sam Abell. I found this photo and it always stuck in my mind. I really hadn’t gone far enough in my career to understand why it was good; I just knew that I liked it. That was until last year, when I heard Sam Abell speak. He spoke about this photo, and it completely changed the way I thought about what goes into a photo. He explained, yes, it is a layered photo, and it is what we all try to do as storytellers.

But then he said, “This photo is really more about the red bucket.”

When he said that, my head kind of exploded. He said that the red bucket was swinging back and forth in the frame, and he spoke about wanting this red bucket because it not only added color to the photo, but it also told something more. It makes me think more about what I have in my photos and more waiting for that thing to happen. Sam Abell is the master of layers, and that is still something that I try to understand and incorporate into my own work.

Q.

What would you say is the difference between what you saw in the image before you heard him speak and after?

A.

Before I heard him speak, to me, it was just this really beautiful image with all of these layers happening. After I heard him speak, it was still that, but he spoke about microcomposing, which is where you compose frames from the back forward. You then fit your subjects together in the frame. In this photo, the guy in the frame is perfectly placed between the guys with the cattle and the two guys in the front are getting ready to brand the cow. Everything leads to the back. Just that whole idea of microcomposing is a really small detail that I realized after I heard him speak. It made me rethink how I composed my frames and how shapes can fit together to better tell a story.

Follow @jabinbotsford, @Whitney_Rich and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.