Understanding Editing

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MartinL

MartinL
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I just finished my third pass through a interesting book, the first of its "type" that I've seen. ("Contact Sheet," Steve Crist, ed., AMMO Books 2009)

The book presents iconic photos embedded in their photographers' contact sheets. Immediately, the questions arise, why (out of this entire roll) is this photo selected; and would I have made the same choice?

There is some slight text that helps explain some of the decisions, but I wish there were more. IMO, editing---selecting among one's own photos---is one of the most "undeveloped" skills among all but the highest stratum of photographers.
 
It's pretty damn' undeveloped among the highest stratum, too, I suspect. The trick is:

Choose a pic that looks good.

Don't pick anything else that's too close.

'Iconic' often means 'seen more often than the alternatives, and therefore better regarded.'

Cheers,

R.
 
MartinL said:
IMO, editing---selecting among one's own photos---is one of the most "undeveloped" skills among all but the highest stratum of photographers.
Click to expand...

You are right, it is a skill that is not developed sufficiently, and looking at a few contact sheets from a well known photographer will amaze an uncritical photographer at the low hit rate. After all, many people are still used to the idea of getting 36 prints back from the chemist and showing all 36 to friends and relatives. They are all 'keepers' as far as the holiday snaps are concerned. And its even worse when people complain that they don't have time to process 250 RAW files, so they shoot in JPEG so you can have the pleasure of their 250 images instantly.

For better or worse its one of the things camera clubs do, force a photographer to be critical of their work, and other peoples work. Unfortunately the value of that critical environment often holds back ambitions to even higher things because the norm is to attain perfection rather than develop expression.

Steve
 
Editing your own work - choosing the "right" photo from a collection of them
(either from files or negatives) is really the hard part in photography (IMO)
This is what makes the difference between a photographer and an enthusiast.

During my photography studies we had to bring no more than 10 images for
class every week, from a long documentary project each student was involved in.
The reason was simple, our master didn't have enough time to review all students'
weekly work if it had been more than that.
For me, every week, I had to narrow 3-6 rolls of film to 10 frames. I just had to
do it if I wanted to get the my master's remarks for that week.

I think that (apart from the short time excuse) he required from us to bring so
little frames just to force us to be critics with our work.
And it helped. Many times I had returned to the contact sheets with his review
looking for frames that might had been better accordingly. (and several times, I had
found the better one).

So, as I see it, it take practice (and good reviews along the way) to develop this ability of
choosing the right one.

Dotan.
 
One would imagine that finding the mass appeal in an image is tough , there are photos you have that you love and feel are some of your best , but then there are the ones that seem to appeal to a much broader audience . It would be at this juncture where one is put in the awful situation of choosing the "best" based again upon a subjective value of what will be considered good. I am certain that many iconic images were probably flanked with equally interesting and perhaps better images on the frame before and after . Editing oneself becomes hard because one is bound to find several images that would be the "right" image but have to choose just one or several from files or rolls of film.

I agree with Pickett Wilson here , sometimes there will be someone else who will pick the image that is "righ" or "works" and hence earns the larger salary.
 
I marvel at how the NatGeo editors of old looked at hundreds of rolls of Kodachrome from a shoot and selected 12 or 15 photos for a spread in the magazine. And we think WE have trouble editing our stuff.
 
I agree that editing is one of the things many photographers don't spend a lot of time developing, I've even written about it a few times on my blog. I think the two skills go together but just because you're a good photographer doesn't mean you're the best editor, and vice versa. But it is something that does help improve your photography if you're willing to put the time in...
 
Laziness is my friend.

First thing, I shoot film. I edit a lot by not taking a shot that I've taken before or that I know won't work for one reason or another. I've also found that when I take multiple shots of something, my first shot is usually my best, so I don't shoot things more than once unless I know or sense I've blown something.

Then I scan film and since I'm lazy, I only pick what I think are the best frames to scan and work on.

Then when I'm preparing to show my work, I try and aim for a first cut then a second cut of roughly half and then live with the second cut till I come to not like a few photos that get cut those.

I think everyone develops a their own process for this but I certainly don't envy people who shoot digitally and do a lot of bracketing and the like.

It is wonderful to see the proof sheets of photographers you admire. That big Robert Frank show was great for this.
 
I think editing is as important as taking pictures. Unfortunately there are not many books about, even not many courses, at least where I live. It is a difficult process, many times a photographer is somehow related to his own pictures and does not like to discharge many of them. I was in germany last summer and shoot more than 12x36 rolls, now they are all developped, scanned and I printed contact sheets. After the first rough selection I printed the survived small 7x10 cm and try to select 20/25 from them. My difficulty is trying build a story from them with a logic behind it. Logic must be about the content itself but also I like the pictures to have a kind of "visual" logic (it is difficult to explain this in a foreign language, sorry). I'll read soon what Damaso has written about editing.
robert
PS @ Pickett Wilson: I took part once at a workshop with M.Yama****e from National Gegraphic: he told me he used to be present at the deiting phase and it was going with slides projected very very quickly, 1 sec. each. Doing like that when there was a "good one" was soon seen that was different from the other. Like a "bang, this is!"
 
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robert blu said:
I think editing is as important as taking pictures. Unfortunately there are not many books about, even not many courses, at least where I live. It is a difficult process, many times a photographer is somehow related to his own pictures and does not like to discharge many of them. I was in germany last summer and shoot more than 12x36 rolls, now they are all developped, scanned and I printed contact sheets. After the first rough selection I printed the survived small 7x10 cm and try to select 20/25 from them. My difficulty is trying build a story from them with a logic behind it. Logic must be about the content itself but also I like the pictures to have a kind of "visual" logic (it is difficult to explain this in a foreign language, sorry). I'll read soon what Damaso has written about editing.
Click to expand...

You're correct not too many people focus on editing and few people teach it. It is one of the things I try to instruct my students on but you are already on the right track by thinking about how to create a narrative. Editing for a photo story is not (just) about picking the strongest images, it is about how those images work in sequence and next to one another and what information they communicate. Of course when you have five great shots of soemthing it can be hard to pick just one!

And as has been mentioned earlier your tastes change over time so you have to factor that it as well. No wonder so many great photographers left the editing to someone else! When in doubt, get a second opinion. That is one of the nicer possibilities of forums like RFF...

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robert blu said:
trying build a story from them with a logic behind it. Logic must be about the content itself but also I like the pictures to have a kind of "visual" logic (
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Yes, and I think that this can be true even of a single photo. I've referred to this quality as the photo's narrative. Of course it's only one moment (hopefully a decisive one 🙂,) but it evokes a whole, or a context that the viewer is seduced into providing. Without the narrative, a photo can be technically interesting, visually stunning, but there are just too many of these photos produced with great photographic presence of mind and gear for me to linger on. I want to make a story.
 
Damaso said:
When in doubt, get a second opinion. That is one of the nicer possibilities of forums like RFF...
Click to expand...
I agree entirely (with your whole post actually.) Soliciting opinions about one's own photos on these forums is useful. However, it's much rarer for someone to discus why he has posted a photo or selected one shot instead of another. Generally, we are more skilled at revealing our images for others to critique than sharing the thinking and sentiments that lie behind our taking and selecting those images.
 
editing

editing

I had a very good friend, a pro photographer and in many cases I gave him the editing of my pictures, sometimes with long discussions about. Unfortunately he died a few month ago (he was 46) and I lost a brotherly friend and my art director. it's life...
Some time ago just as experiemnt I also tried to have some pictures evaluated by the RFF friends, you can give a look at this album and related comments if you like. I think it is anyway important to discuss our own pictures with someone else, of course than the decision is and will be our decision.
regards
robert
 
interesting exercise in your blog, I tried to make "my" selection which included the first (i like the diagonal of the keyboard), the second (for fans it's always interesting to know which instrument the artist are using) and the third (I'm not a musician but this it is an interesting position of the fingers). Interesting to read your evaluation of the pictures, thanks for the exercise. Grazie
robert
 
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