I came across this
article via twitter before starting DPP and when I was looking through my
twitter feed realised it had a lot of relevance to the initial exercises of the
course concerned with workflow and editing.
The piece was posted
on Duckrabbitblog on 25th January 2012
by photographer and photography teacher John Macpherson. I like the open and
personal tone of the piece in which Macpherson discusses what he believes to be
the potential mistake of photographers deleting pictures in the field alongside
his experiences of tutoring novice photographers.
He begins by
explaining how he tries "to encourage a
process of editing images on the computer"…."just like the contact
sheets we used to make in the good old film days." He continues, "for many inexperienced photographers it’s
actually quite difficult to determine what actually constitutes a ‘good’ or
‘successful’ image and that too often its the technical qualities that are the
defining ones, overriding any other less tangible considerations."
He follows this with
an anecdote of how one of his students failed to see the potential of one of
her shots and apologised for not having deleted it at the time because it was "not sharp." Macpherson's experience
and visual knowledge however told him differently - to him the image was evocative and the lack
of sharpness made the image timeless with a certain amount of 'emotional
content.' This led him to conclude, "taking
‘good’ images is very easy, but the difficulty is that they are invariably
surrounded by a mass of work of lesser value. How does one discern the good
from bad? If you’re a novice photographer how can you tell the difference? I
often wonder how many real gems never see the light of day because they are
simply deleted?"
Another anecdote
concerning a discussion about a students image that to her represented
something very negative, (a photograph of her partners damaged leg after a
serious accident which meant they were separated by hundreds of miles while he
recuperated.) After discussion it was agreed that her feelings were based on
the emotional force she placed on the picture and that disregarding this and
focussing on the pictures actual content could lead to a very different reading
- that the image actually represents
tenderness, caring and healing. After the discussion the woman changes her
opinion which to Macpherson shows the importance of sharing your work:
"I think its vital that you share your work with
people you know. Discussing why it was made, and what it makes you feel like,
is a hugely valuable thing to do. It’s an even more valuable thing to do with
people you don’t know, because they’re less likely to care about offending you
by saying they don’t like a particular image."
After the article,
in the comments section, Macpherson touches on a particular issue connected
with digital photography - the ability to take hundreds of pictures at a time.
He states that "It took me literally years
to learn to ‘read’ and properly understand images in the editing process. It
really is a skill to develop, separate from the button pressing that creates
images." And on the subject of being able to "shoot 10 frames a second [and] to come back
from an event with a huge amount of material" he adds this note of
caution:
"[it's] a painful job if you want to consider
every single frame, check the expressions on faces, where eyes are looking, all
the little details that can make or break an image. I think a lot of people
lose a lot of work because they just don’t have the time to carefully edit, and
they probably miss some useful work. I know I’ve come across little gems I
missed first, second and third time around because there was so much other
stuff."
Lots of interesting
food for thought for me in this article - I never delete images from my memory
card (so a tick for me there!) but I am increasingly coming to the conclusion
that my ability to edit successfully is something I need to work hard at. Often
I am consumed with self doubt and disappointment when reviewing images. I have
tried various strategies to combat this - editing as soon as possible after a
shoot (which is not always practical) and also leaving a bit of time between
shooting and editing as I sometimes find the cushion of time can help me be
more objective about the images. The advice to seek feedback about images is
one I will try to incorporate for example actively seeking feedback through
Flickr. The problem with this however is that a certain amount of editing is
required which does not eliminate the problem of good images being lost and not
being selected at all. My overall feeling is that I need to create a schedule
for both shooting and editing - I tend to have intense periods when I take a
large amount of photographs which is often punctuated with inactivity. I need
to arrive at a better strategy for managing my time which pushes me to
photograph more regularly, however, this also needs to be reinforced with
robust editing and taking my pictures to some sort of output - even if this is
just posting on Flickr.
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