Sometimes as a professional photographer the photos that you take don’t necessarily live up to the idea or vision or the image you were attempting to capture.

I shot the above photo on Wednesday afternoon of a large model of Eddie Murphy’s head being towed down U.S. 540 near the Pinnacle Hills Parkway exit. The head was in Northwest Arkansas to advertise Murphy’s new movie “Meet Dave.” This photo was taken over my steering wheel while driving 70 mph on the freeway. It was shot in a sort of point-and-shoot fashion. I honestly took the photo for fun not thinking it would be fit for publication.

About fifteen minutes earlier I had been staking out the odd sight while it was parked next to a restaurant on South Walton Boulevard in Bentonville. I had moved around to several different locations trying to get an angle that juxtaposed the large grinning Eddie Murphy head with a person or vehicle or anything that would make for a funny feature photo. Well as luck would have it the driver of the vehicle towing big Eddie emerged from the restaurant, climbed into his vehicle and drove off. I fell in behind him in my vehicle and followed thinking Pinnacle Hills Promenade would be the destination. Well, the drvier kept going. I snapped a few photos along the way just for fun and then exited and let Big Head Ed go.

Fast forward to today, Friday, and my boss, photo editor Spencer Tirey, saw the two-day-old photo. He immediately asked me why I hadn’t submitted the photo for the newspaper the day I shot it. “Because I didn’t think the photo was strong enough and I didn’t have any information for a cutline except the obvious,” I replied. Honestly my line of thinking was the photo wasn’t good because it wasn’t the photo I wanted to get. It was something I had to settle for and therefore I wasn’t proud of it. After talking about it for a bit I now know I need to sometimes look at my images more for their news or entertainment value and not so much for their esthetic qualities. I’m glad we have this blog so I can still publish the photo for others to enjoy it.