Style (Justin Vogel Quote)

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jbot

Jared Krause
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Just read this on an old HCSP forum post. Justin Vogel posts, in regards to style:

I am technically a pretty lousy photographer, and I am a basically lazy person, but I keep shooting and shooting and editing. Editing is important. Your style becomes what you choose to keep vs what you choose to ditch. Edit like you hate yourself. Look for things you dont like. Know yourself. "Who you are" is going to eventually dictate what your pictures look like.
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I agree with what he's said here. What do you guys think?
 
I do agree with the importance of editing. That's not to say other things don't matter or aren't important, obviously. But, to me, getting better at photography is all about reducing the amount of photos I need to discard/edit out when I get back to my computer or develop a roll of film. In other words, increasing the rate of keepers.
 
Editing is essential. For all we know, HCB has tens of thousands of unseen photos of cats being cute.
 
The number I always come back to is that Robert Frank shot over 500 rolls for The Americans. Roughly 18000 frames in a year. A fully-mounted Americans exhibition, IIRC, is ~100 prints.
 
celluloidprop said:
The number I always come back to is that Robert Frank shot over 500 rolls for The Americans. Roughly 18000 frames in a year. A fully-mounted Americans exhibition, IIRC, is ~100 prints.
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There's a quote from Martin Parr that I love...


"I take Hundreds of thousands of pictures every year, and most of them are rubbish. You need to take bad pictures to get the good ones." - Martin Parr

Shortly after, he claimed that if he gets 10 good shots in a year he's happy.
 
jbot said:
Shortly after, he claimed that if he gets 10 good shots in a year he's happy.
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I recently had a similar discussion with a photographer friend, on why it'd be so bad to come home after a trip with only one or two good pictures. It'd be something to be proud of. It would mean about 100 pictures during your life that are good or outstanding. That's more than you'll probably remember of some of the most famous photographers. So now I go on trips hoping to come home with one or two good pictures :)
 
Harry Callahan has said that if he makes ONE photo in a year that is worth printing, it's a good year.
 
I always find it funny when these photographers say these things about quantity...because if you look at a project or a book... they are using a lot more than one photo (or even 10 photos) a year. I think what they mean is not good or keepers, but SPECTACULAR.
 
jsrockit said:
I always find it funny when these photographers say these things about quantity...because if you look at a project or a book... they are using a lot more than one photo (or even 10 photos) a year. I think what they mean is not good or keepers, but SPECTACULAR.
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Definitely. I don't think they're trying to hide that fact. They mean meaningful moving powerful shots. Every good photographer can go to an event and bring back a bunch of good images. But great images are hard to come by.
 
I think of taking photos more like a process of editing things out of the surrounding environment with my camera, rather than editing things in. Thats why I never really like the word composition to describe what I try to do, edit souds more accurate.
 
I do agree, not a big fan of his style but I do like photographers who seek out difficulty as a way to improve, who are harder on themselves rather than taking it easy and just cruising through
 
True enough. Just that my style may not be considered very good or very interesting by the rest of the world. But I can only see and shoot the way I do...kinda like if I played guitar, I could only play like me, not like Jimi Hendrix....
 
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