Some thoughts on self-editing and hit rate

[NZDavid]

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Interesting answers. I've got some way to catch up with George, but it's amazing how fast slides/photos/digital can build up on you. Scary, in fact. Most of my slides are backed up, first as CDs then as DVDs, and also on the hard drive. Slides from trips are kept in trays, others in plastic folders. These need more editing. No idea how many I have shot this year -- 1,000-plus slides, lots more digital images awaiting editing. I can't turn digital files into slides though! My experience is it is so much easier to shoot stacks of digital pictures -- too easy, without thinking how much time will later have to be spend editing them. Something for winter days later on...

[250swb]

I applaud your self criticism Bill, if only more people did it with such gusto. I'd be perfectly happy with 12 images a year that really stood out, or one if it was really good.

 

But, there is some danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I know you work at themes and towards ideas and concepts, and that work is how any good photographer approaches his subject. But its the narrative that can be lost by just choosing 'the best'.

 

Take as an example the aforementioned Winogrand. In an anthology of his work we see the stand out images from his books like 'The Animals' or 'Public Relations', but without the less stellar (but still outstanding) images that appear in the books they mean very little, they could be snapshots (photographs without context). So I think there is some wiggle room to suggest that there are always some photographs that may not be as good as the best, but can be as important, or more important, if they add to the body of work as a whole. And I think the skill in editing is not to see the blockbusters because they are always self evident, but to identify those whose strength lies in that narrative. On a crude level lower than the narrative argument (even if its not a book or exhibition you are working towards) they are the ones that show the best ones aren't accidents, but that you mean to say something.

 

Steve

[xxxceli]

Hi Bill,

 

Congratulations on your year's collection it's beautiful!

 

It's also a very inspiring post.

[Bill Allsopp]

Hi Bill,

 

Congratulations on your year's collection it's beautiful!

 

It's also a very inspiring post.

I wholly concur.

 

In the old days (many, many years ago) I was content to get one good shot per roll

Then came digital and, like many I suspect, I shot much more and got much more rubbish in proportion. Finally I have realised that as a landscape photographer my subject rarely runs away from me and I can take time; I shoot more often but take less frames and get a much higher "Hit rate".

 

Whether they are good or not is not for me to say BUT I am happy with my photography and that is all I ask.

 

Thanks for a very interest post and all the excellent replies.

Merry Christmas

[bill]

I applaud your self criticism Bill, if only more people did it with such gusto. I'd be perfectly happy with 12 images a year that really stood out, or one if it was really good.

 

But, there is some danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I know you work at themes and towards ideas and concepts, and that work is how any good photographer approaches his subject. But its the narrative that can be lost by just choosing 'the best'.

...

 

Steve, thank you for a very interesting and thought-provoking post. You are spot-on when you say that I work at themes and concepts; many of my posts to the Photo forums take the form of "essays" - three or more shots that tell a story and (hopefully) stand together.

 

One shot alone is a bit like shouting "ME!" or "DOG!" or "HOUSE!", whereas the essay approach presents an interpretation of a subject that includes an "introduction" before the main event, thus "This is me, with my dog, walking up a long driveway to a large house."

 

Sorry if this is a bit rambly - I am just thinking it through and articulating it. Thanks again for helping me onto this train of thought - one of the few running today

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[Sailronin]

A thought provoking topic, thank you Bill for starting the thread.

I know that this is related to Andy's thread about great photographs.

I had a busy year (photography speaking) with travel and a concerted effort to shoot around here as well. According to the metadata on my cameras I've made about 8,000 exposures in addition to four rolls of 35mm and 15 rolls of 120 this year. Probably 6,000 went into the delete file once viewed on a computer.

Of the remainder, perhaps 300 or so were "acceptable" and OK to let someone else view; either posting on a website for comment or just to show a location or experiment with a theme or concept. I think this was probably too many and didn't result in "great photographs" in this or other forums.

On my website I made a "Dave's Favorites" gallery a couple of weeks ago, culling through that site to pick images I particularly enjoyed, it contains 18 images of which 16 were shot this year. I think that's a "success ratio" of about .002% in answer to the original question.

 

In shooting (firearms not cameras) there's a saying..."The amateur practices until he gets it right; the professional practices until he can't get it wrong."

Keep shooting, it's the only way to improve!

[Jeff S]

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I applaud your self criticism Bill, if only more people did it with such gusto. I'd be perfectly happy with 12 images a year that really stood out, or one if it was really good.

 

But, there is some danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I know you work at themes and towards ideas and concepts, and that work is how any good photographer approaches his subject. But its the narrative that can be lost by just choosing 'the best'.

 

Take as an example the aforementioned Winogrand. In an anthology of his work we see the stand out images from his books like 'The Animals' or 'Public Relations', but without the less stellar (but still outstanding) images that appear in the books they mean very little, they could be snapshots (photographs without context). So I think there is some wiggle room to suggest that there are always some photographs that may not be as good as the best, but can be as important, or more important, if they add to the body of work as a whole. And I think the skill in editing is not to see the blockbusters because they are always self evident, but to identify those whose strength lies in that narrative. On a crude level lower than the narrative argument (even if its not a book or exhibition you are working towards) they are the ones that show the best ones aren't accidents, but that you mean to say something.

 

Steve

 

Totally agree, and this is precisely why I chose to develop two portfolios of work from the year (post#12) rather than just the 'greatest hits.' As new work develops, I'm continually editing the portfolios and over time I suspect I will create new portfolios and/or books from the resultant editing.

 

I also find it fascinating to have friends, family, fellow photographers - people with and without photo backgrounds - thumb through the two portfolios to pick their favorites. Often, they like certain sequences of photos in addition to individual ones. And, it's interesting also that the top photos or photo sequences they choose vary greatly from person to person.

 

I'm not sure it's a strength or a weakness that my year's work doesn't follow one subject or style, and that audience tastes (and my own) vary. In any case, part of the fun for me is building around some of the diverse themes that emerge. Some of these after-the-fact themes could develop into more thorough projects eventually...or not.

 

Jeff

[kkochheiser]

I'm going to post a brief thank you to Bill especially, but also to the other contributors to this thread. For me this has been by far the most helpful thread I've read on this very helpful forum. I will post some editing comments of my own when I have a chance but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to thank you for helping me with my thoughts.

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

 

Kent

[thompsonkirk]

About the Winogrand article, & Steve's thoughtful point about it: I agree entirely.

 

But W. certainly had an interesting contribution for this thread – he thought that to edit well, you need to detach yourself from whatever enamored you at the moment you took the picture, so you could see it clearly as just-a-picture. So he liked to wait a year before he developed the film!

 

Is anyone likely to convert to his way of editing?

 

Kirk

[farnz]

About the Winogrand article, & Steve's thoughtful point about it: I agree entirely.

 

But W. certainly had an interesting contribution for this thread – he thought that to edit well, you need to detach yourself from whatever enamored you at the moment you took the picture, so you could see it clearly as just-a-picture. So he liked to wait a year before he developed the film!

 

Is anyone likely to convert to his way of editing?

 

Kirk

Kirk,

 

Please refer to post no. 3.

 

Pete.

[pop]

Is anyone likely to convert to his way of editing?

 

I try to, from time to time.

 

There is a number of helpful techniques which make the task a little less difficult.

 

For one, try looking at your pictures while holding them upside down. Many aspects which make a good picture are independent of the orientation while your reactions to the content are not.

 

Look at an unsharp version of your picture. If you only see a arrangement of blurs, some properties stand out. For me, taking off my glasses will do just fine.

[Sandokan]

Thanks Bill - yet another interesting post, which is why I probably read your blog as well on occassions.

 

First with digital - I found myself as parsimonious as I was with film (my D&P costs were about GBP30 per roll). Then I loosened up and found I was getting more "great" shots from each shoot but the same number of in-focus, well exposed, compositionally OK shots. Now going back to film, I fire more per image than I did before (home developing and colour goes to Germany).

 

One thing nobody has mentioned - how many shots do you fire off just to finish a roll of film?

 

With medium format - I still find myself not shooting if I think its not going to work compositionally and so I have a greater hit rate (typically 1 per roll).

 

This year I have had about 2000 shots that made it from the camera to the computer but only about 30 that were >3 star ratings and only about 20 that my wife went "wow" over.

[Jager]

About the Winogrand article, & Steve's thoughtful point about it: I agree entirely.

 

But W. certainly had an interesting contribution for this thread – he thought that to edit well, you need to detach yourself from whatever enamored you at the moment you took the picture, so you could see it clearly as just-a-picture. So he liked to wait a year before he developed the film!

 

Is anyone likely to convert to his way of editing?

 

Kirk

 

Though it clearly worked for Winogrand, I'm not sure it's necessary to wait a year to re-establish a degree of objectivity. Seems to me that waiting a few weeks like Pete is sufficient in most cases to get some distance from the shot itself.

 

In any case, I think the intent of the shoot often precludes waiting too long. Most commercial work has a deadline associated with it.

 

And absent the practice of tossing aside an SD/Compact Flash card for awhile, digital can make the practice of waiting a little problematic. I like to keep some degree of thematic coherency to the folder structure in which I save images - and that compels a fairly frequent (at least weekly for me) practice of getting the images from camera to computer. And once they're in Lightroom, how can you not look at them?

 

Mostly, I've found, for me, that the images I'm attracted to during a first edit soon after the shoot itself are very much the same ones that I like when looking at them a year later.

[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello Bill,

 

Nice photos.

 

If you have one really good photo out of 500 or learn, enjoy or otherwise expand yourself, the World or some part of it by taking pictures your time is well spent.

 

You have significantly more than 1 in your 14.

 

Digital/film is @ a unique point historically. Ten years ago film was mostly better. Ten years from now it appears digital or its sucessor will be. Today is a unique time when things are pretty much 6 of 1 as opposed to 1/2 dozen of the other. What is slightly better w/ film is probably not quite up to par w/ digital & the reverse the other way around. But all & all they are ballpark close to each other. This is a time period which may not last that long. Different mediums for sure but digital or its sucessor will probably replace film more than it has in the not too distant future for reasons which may to a great part have nothing to do w/ the quality of image formation.

 

We are the Dinosaurs & the Mammals are here.

 

If you analyze a group of photographs or a single photograph you can often tell whether the previsualization was in Color or B&W. You can sometimes tell a different story by using one as opposed to the other in the same picture w/ nothing other than a change from one to the other. Sometimes you can see a picture done in one which might have been better presented in the other.

 

Quite frequently no value judgement here rather just the idea a person wants to convey.

 

I sometimes do what Phillip suggested when I teach my classes about paintings. I will hold a painting upside down & we will discuss aspects of composition, balace, color & so forth. By taking away familiar or recognizable subjects as reference points students are often more able to concentrate on specific compositional aspects, etc.

 

Froliche Weihnachten

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[pico]

[...] Digital/film is @ a unique point historically. Ten years ago film was mostly better. Ten years from now it appears digital or its sucessor will be. [...] digital or its sucessor will probably replace film more than it has in the not too distant future [...]

 

Care to speculate on what follows digital photography?

[Michael Geschlecht]

Hello pico,

 

Thanx for reading.

 

Haven't got a clue.

 

In the original Startrek they said: "space - the final frontier" when what would have been more accurate to say would have been "space - the next frontier".

 

People as a group have historically on occasion thought of themselves as having reached a point where things could not be improved on. This has on occasion been an inaccurate assumption. As an example in the US of A in the 1830's or thereabouts there was a significant movement which tried to close the Patent Office because it was obvious to many people @ the time that w/ the explosion of ideas & inventions that had already occured because of the Industrial Revoloution all that could possibly be invented had or pretty much had been. Many people@ the time therefore considered the Patent Office just another waste of taxpayer's money.

 

Reality is most likely that which actually exists. People's definitionally retrospective perceptions of reality are formulated out of a complex of paradigms constructed using an integration of previous paradigms w/ current data. This formulates either extrapolated originals or replacements. Some like MR or MR4 are not that different some like Flat Earth or Round Earth are sometimes more so.

 

Froliche Weihnachten.

 

Best Regards,

 

Michael

[Per P.]

This is a very interesting thread to follow. It touches on the topics discussed in Great Photographs and Where is Landscape Photography headed. And for me it relates to why each of us is making photographs in the first place, which is something I have been giving some thought. On the topic of building a portfolio I have read insightful articles from e.g. Alain Briot on Luminous Landscape, and I followed an online course by the great William Neill.

 

My first taste of self-editing was 15 years ago when I read an interview with a German travel photographer whose name I unfortunately forgot. He had taken about 15'000 photos for a book on USA and ended up selecting 150.... I am not that harsh, but it depends on the purpose.

 

So, for a personal photo album from a 2-3 week vacation I aim for 50-80 photos, which is usually 10-15%. I sometimes select 15-20 that others might enjoy for Flickr (flickr.com/pped1/sets). In addition I build portfolios on topics of interest, e.g. landscapes. I keep them to 15-25 photos and continue to refine/improve the quality with new and better shots. Finally, I end each year by selecting 12 of the best shots from the year, based on purely artistic value. These can be storytelling, compositional or documentary photos that I find particularly successful and, hopefully, interesting for others. I hope to start printing these next year and one day they will end up on my website

[bill]

Fascinating views and interesting stats coming out here. I feel a blog entry coming on...

 

I am particularly interested in the point coming out about "edit-lag" - the time it takes before you can edit objectively. I am certain that we all differ, but I am equally certain that it is healthy to wait at least a week before "digesting" your own output.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[pop]

... the time it takes before you can edit objectively. .... healthy to wait at least a week before "digesting" your own output.

 

"Editing objectively" might be the very thing some of us might not want to do, at least not all of the time.

 

Some shots are taken in order to convey a particular mood or feeling where "objectivity" might not allow for the best judgment of your work.

 

In that vein, waiting a week before digesting might be much too long. Some finishing or selecting has to be done while the impressions and moods are still fresh in the head (or bones or wherever such things live).

 

On the other hand, waiting a year before finally assessing if some kind of mood at all is transported by your work might be just right or even too fast.

 

It all depends.

 

Also, giving it numbers and durations is the least important part of it all. Doing it at all (digesting, judging, selecting) is the important thing.

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[pico]

[...] I am particularly interested in the point coming out about "edit-lag" - the time it takes before you can edit objectively. I am certain that we all differ, but I am equally certain that it is healthy to wait at least a week before "digesting" your own output.

 

That reminds me of a bit of advice I've had: "Forget about the warm feeling or fear that you experienced when you made the picture because the viewer does not have that memory."

 

The photographer has no objectivity, however he might have personal standards that he built from knowing others' work. If one is not disappointed with the vast majority of his work, then it is probably dross.

 

--

Pico - the worst photographer here