An excellent example, Mark!
I attended college in San Francisco, and had some very respected
luminaries as teachers in the craft of photography.
I was told, and remember this was in the days of film, to not expect
more than one or two good shots per roll of 35 mm.
Do not expect to get more than one or two really exceptional shots a
year.
If you work on several themes, it may take you 5 years to put together
a show from one collection. Or maybe a lifetime.
We were also told to catalog and file in strips of six every roll of
film and keep them in archival storage in case we remained following
our path in photography for the rest of our lives. Then nearing death,
will them to some foundation and let them worry about what's good. You
won't know if they threw some or all of them out after you're gone.
Transparencies were different. Protect the true keepers. Store the
also-rans so you can go through them again from time to time as you
may see something with fresh eyes, or of historical significance, that
can be used. Every ten years or so have some other photographer who is
not close to you go through them and set those they consider worthy
aside. Trash the rest if you want to. But heck, I still have an empty
100 sheet 4x5 Plus-X film box full of Ektachrome film ends I've kept
for the great colors and swirls they contained. Clamp marks included!
Compare this to digital work we are doing today. Throw out ones with
no discernable image. Set aside those that seem pretty good to you in
a folder on your hard disk using some kind of filing system, be it
image type, month, or themes. Put the rest in a folder by the month or
year. You may want to go back and look again at some later time. Work
with the ones you think have merit that you culled into the pretty
good folder. Set the ones that come out really well into a folder of
their own to be printed, or booked, or displayed online.
The volume of images is ten/twenty/a hundred fold compared to the film
days. I use Aperture, which allows me to "throw out" images that will
just get in the way. They are still there, both as originals on my
drives and as working referenced images within Aperture. But I have to
make a small effort to see them ever again. They don't get in the way.
Lightroom, iPhoto, and other "workflow" designed programs all do the
same.
Here on PDML, we love to see all the work that we've set aside in the
"pretty good" folder. Our critiques and comments will help to make you
photography better. Because of the volume of images we all take,
expect to get more keepers, but work harder to find the best ones in
the chaff. Don't want to overwhelm the members. <grin>
On Oct 5, 2010, at 14:53 , Mark Roberts wrote:
Walter Gilbert wrote:
what do all of you real photographers do with images that may
be flawed, but still have some redeeming qualities to them. For
instance, a shot that's too poorly focused to rescue with sharpening
tools and so forth, but does capture a sense of action that is
somewhat
appealing. Like this one, for example:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/7X4Utq1sTP4AoZG2S3S0zQ?feat=directlink
That's a great question.
There are many answers and it largely depends on to what end you put
your photography. The image you used as an example could be an
excellent illustration in some applications. (With some Photoshop
tweaking it might be work even better as a "photo illustration", as
they're sometimes termed.)
Out-of-focus shots can sometimes serve as backgrounds in multimedia
applications or print layouts.
Sometimes a composition that doesn't work as a standalone shot serves
as an excellent container or background to a montage. In one instance
that has gone down in PDML history, someone posted a shot of a
Cormorant in a tree and expressed disappointment that he couldn't
quite make the composition work as well as he would have liked. Then
Cotty pointed out that the empty areas of the frame were situated in a
way that made it ideal for a magazine cover. The mock-up he whipped
together to make his point left reverberations that are being felt to
this day:
http://www.robertstech.com/graphics/pages/1cormorant.htm
Joseph McAllister
Lots of gear, not much time
http://gallery.me.com/jomac
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