It happens constantly to anyone who pays attention and has developed the habit. A cool photo will reveal itself, or at least the potential for one will. You pause and think that would make a cool photo. If you're a certain type of person, you stop and fuss around and attempt to extract the cool photo, and sometimes you succeed.
You have a cool photo, at this point, and that's great. Cool photos, well, they're pretty cool.
Here's the rub: the range of responses you can expect to your photo are limited to the range of meh? to cool photo!
Sure, you might luck out and accidentally make a more profound photograph. You might find a home for your cool photo that lends it more profundity, perhaps. Maybe.
The coolness of your photo, if it's really cool, will tend to get in the way. If you truly succeeded, people will mainly notice the neat juxtaposition you discovered, or the brilliant colors, or the amusing sign, or whatever it was, which is going to make it harder to see the profundity.
Which circles back around to the endlessly expounded theme here, that you really need to feel something first, and shoot second, if you want to make something more than a cool photo.
I'm not sure I could identify a profound photo if I saw one. Maybe it's because I lump them into the same "Cool Photo" bucket? I like keeping my bar low, a photo I've taken that I think is cool would make my week. If someone else agrees, then I'm feeling pretty good for the rest of the month.
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