Photography Immediate: Beginnings

The pictures immediate this week is: Beginnings

Create and share pictures impressed by this week’s immediate in your Aminus3 web site, Substack Notes, or linked within the feedback on this publish.

Substack group can tag Aminus3 Photography in your posts.

Those of you posting on the Aminus3 group, add tag: am3-prompt-202602

Once once more we kick off one other 12 months with a gap for journey and new begins.

Worth revisiting, final 12 months we recommended how a “Photo Manifestation – One Click, One Step” can be utilized for setting intentions in a concrete means by means of pictures.

For this 12 months, I assumed I’d begin out with a extra conceptual immediate, Beginnings, to be interpreted as you select.

What do you visualize once you consider a a starting?

Starting a life collectively in marriage, or perhaps a first date? The first picture with a brand new digital camera? Or possibly the beginning of one thing else. Perhaps it’s a extra visible or graphic depiction that exhibits the best way that one thing begins.

For fast concepts, listed here are just a few pictures that have been posted for final week’s immediate which additionally may counsel beginnings.

Before taking a brand new step in the direction of beginnings, lets take another look again on the favourite pictures that have been shared for the final 12 months and final week’s immediate, “Favorite 2025.”

I used to be impressed not solely by the attractive footage, however the insightful ideas and private philosophies in regard to what contributed to every particular person’s choice.

One repeating sentiment was that “favorite” photograph, and “best” photograph usually are not all the time the identical.

A great reminder to create for ourselves the place our favorites shine for causes outdoors of exterior metrics of technically good pictures.

Aminus3 started by trying to find qualities of photographic excellence by means of method, place, tradition, time, humanity, and expressions of consciousness or consciousness. Our function has been to focus on a way of connection to one thing bigger than simply our on a regular basis world.

Some of those sentiments have been eloquently described by Ruthie, who wrote:

“We can all interpret favorite 2025 in our own way. SOme will choose to post photos previously posted to Aminus3. SOme will choose to post favorite edited photos. I am choosing favorite photos I took, not previously seen on Aminus3. As it turns out most of my favorite photos are not my best scenes or edits. They are photos that touch my heart in some way. As you will see this week, mostly family photos. These photos will not likely win a SPotlight. But they are my favorite photos from this year.”

and Vaido who wrote :

“A photographer’s year-end review often tends to feel like a technical inspection. We hunt for those specific frames where the light hit perfectly, the composition followed the golden ratio, and the focus was razor-sharp. But as I flipped through the moments captured this year, I decided to focus instead on my favorite emotions. Perhaps I haven’t managed to make these moments perfect for you through a screen, because the reality held scents, sounds, tastes, and the warmth of good company. Yet, looking at these images, it all comes flooding back to me.”

Amanita Efira writes about how:

“This year, I captured that instant, when the wave expands to its fullest just before returning to the ocean.

For me, photography lives in that moment: the instant of clarity, the peak when everything aligns, at least for my eyes. And I love how it changes depending on the eye behind the camera”

For just a few individuals, the photograph they chose as a favourite was both a marker of a big second, or the weather within the photograph represented a core worth or aspiration for them.

This echoes the concepts above (from final 12 months’s “photo manifestation”) about the facility of pictures to bridge our inside and outer worlds.

These digital camera like gadgets in our arms usually are not just for freezing time from the previous, however for setting new energies into the long run as properly.

Here, Todd Haughton displays on one of many 12 months’s private peak experiences, Martirene Alcantara sees the mild energy of impermanence within the shadows, and Emma Schneck lingers on the best way a picture can evoke a sense of being easy and free.

Bob Simmons highly effective leaf reminds us of how 2025 was so difficult to many and writes:

“If I pick my favorite tomorrow it might be different. But right now, I’ll post this one. I like the simplicity and the texture. And I like the fact that this defiant leaf held its ground through a wind and snow storm, digging in and holding on in extremely difficult conditions when you would think it would just blow away.”

Some favourite pictures honored mates and family members who handed on within the final 12 months.

Just a few individuals wrote that they’d simply began, or reconnected to pictures in 2025, and have been trying again at how far they’d come.

Closing out, I had thought of creating a bigger zine or physique of labor to focus on the entire ideas, expressions, and unimaginable photographs that have been shared for the Favorite 2025 photograph immediate, however I used to be not capable of get to it this time.

An goal for 2026 will likely be to publish new codecs that showcase the unimaginable photographs which might be posted week to week.

Until then, listed here are just a few extra alternatives and, as all the time, you’ll find hyperlinks to all of the photographers and pictures beneath.

As we begin a brand new 2026, we thank every of you for supporting creativity in our world. Sharing our photographs, our phrases and bringing magnificence into this world has by no means been extra crucial. We say goodby to 2025 and want every of you contemporary new beginnings!

See all the photos shared on Aminus3 for final week’s Favorite-2025 immediate.

Substack pictures shared this week from:

Mal Pronouns (photo), Mark Farley’s wandering’s (photo, photo), Sarah Best (photo), Chuck Marshall (photo), Evie Jay (photo)

Derrick Buckner (photo), Mark Hayes 🇺🇸 (photo), Darin (photo), What Remains Still (photo), Brenda Gottsabend (photo), Cameron Gallagher (photo), BH (photo), Susan Niemann (photo), Laura Register (photo, photo), Amanita Efira (photo), April Mensinger (photo), scott norton (photo), Nushen Baihe (photo), Lauri Novak (photo), Paul Maven (photo), Bob Warner Photography (photo, photo, photo), Angela Cappetta (photo), Jeff Delp (photo), The Bard of Tysoe (photo), Kate Caddell (photo), Don Scott (photo), Brenna Weeks (photo), NoOne (photo), KMarie (photo), CL (photo), David Concannon (photo, photo), Michael Arndt (photo), wildflower (photo) Gwendolyn Rector MacLeod (photo), Cynthia Hartwig (photo, photo), Paula Dear (photo), Sandra Schmidt (photo), Donn Dobkin (photo), Carol.G.Photography (photo), Paul Williams (photo), Ciara Totton (photo), Mike’s Collection (photo), Wild Lion*esses Pride by Jay (photo), Richard Schulz (photo), Fujifilm Fun (photo), Jeff Kehler (photo), Angie Dawn (photo), Liz (photo), Brian Ingram (photo), Mark Rogers (photo), Renée Guillory (she/her) (photo), David Arthur (photo), Jesse (photo), Gabriele Romanacci (photo), Todd Takes Pictures (photo, photo), Samuel Hanok (photo), Tam’s Tidings (photo), Bob Loudon (photo), Alessandro Manni (photo), A Brooks Brotha (photo), Franco Wong (photo), Erick Levitre (photo), Todd Haughton (photo), Andrea (photo), Nancy Mathias (photo), Pat Wood (photo), Stillness in Focus (photo), J. Ashley Nixon (photo), Gettin’ Some ~ Jim Golden (photo), Richard Carter (photo), Lauren Church (photo), Mark Caicedo (photo), Martirene Alcantara (photo), László Horváth (photo), Postcards From Home (photo), RPMatt (photo), Aldo Jonsson (photo), Clarke Mayer (photo), Paul John Dear (photo), George Appletree (photo), JBD (photo), Γιώργος Παραδείσης (photo), Bob Simmons (photo), J’s Photo Stack (photo), Emma Schneck (photo), Really Abstract (photo), Good Medicine (photo), Sandra Blair (photo), Flavio Massignan (photo), West (photo) Garrett Glazier (photo), Richard Pelletier (photo), Kara (photo, Mary Hone (photo), Cheyenne Winter (photo), søren k. harbel (photo), William R. Bullock 🌏 (photo), Kris (photo), Aman (photo), Jeremy Butler (photo), Marloes Wardenier (photo), Meg (photo), Barbara Jaye Wilson (photo), Joanna Kaze (photo), Beck Sharron (photo), Paul Votava (photo)

As a ultimate thought, it’s been a pleasure to see so many unimaginable pictures that have been shared which have been shot on movie. There is a thriving group of movie photographers right here on Substack, and it’s superior to see so many impressed by the weekly photograph prompts.

This 12 months marks the primary time I shot on movie in an extended whereas, after my Dad kindly loaned me two of his cameras, and I’m trying ahead to extra in 2026.