Your best photos of the week, March 1, 2019

The Your Shot photo community is home to photographers from 195 countries, and each week, I have the unique opportunity to see their diverse work. One of my roles as a photo editor is to look at the pictures that are submitted every day, and decide which might go on to be featured in Daily Dozen, this weekly series, National Geographic's Photo of the Day or even a page in National Geographic magazine.

In this week’s round-up, I loved how Emma H. used color and texture to fill the frame in her mobile photograph of her iguana. It stood out immediately while doing my daily edits in a thumbnail view. Our photographers on Your Shot are always finding creative ways to focus the viewer’s attention to their character in frame. Emma brought the image completely to life, and I feel like I could just reach out and touch this iguana!

Last weekend I started reading Classic Essays on Photography, and it led me to think about how color plays a role in photography. When color photography was first introduced in 1861 with a tricolor negative photo of a tartan ribbon, the course of photographic history completely changed. Photography now offered the color of life in still images, showing us peoples and places as they appeared to the naked eye. From there, to the first autochrome camera invented in 1907, to today the technology in color photography has continued to evolve. You can see more historic photos here.

Black-and-white photography is where the craft was founded, so it will always feel timeless. But color can transform an entire moment and present it in a way our eyes can naturally recognize. Every day I’m fortunate to get lost in the extraordinary variety that Your Shot has to offer-- in all styles of photography, whether black-and-white or color.