Dont worry to much about what you are trying to say. Once you have a substantial amount of shots - do work prints from them and put them up on a big wall. Start looking at them, first as a whole and then remove (or add) prints as you start seeing them individually and/or as a group. Invite friends in to help. Very few photographers can edit their own stuff and "outside" help is essential. It will help you with the continuity of the story as well as "OK, what happened next" or "who is this guy and what is his part in the story" type comment. Dont rely entirely on fellow photographers - we tend to be blind to the story in the shot and look at it as a photograph.
We should always try to see the shots for what they are - illustrations of a situation - and they have to tell a story- individually and as a whole.
Figure out that you are doing well if 10 out of 100 shots meets with your approval! The Essay Masters - Eugeen Smith/Salgado/ Eugeen Richards shoot and shot 1000's of pictures for a 40-50 picture essay. It is a matter of getting a "flow" to the story. Nothing beats the old journalistic adage "Who,When,What,Where and Why" - it really doesn't matter if it is words or images. You are off to a good start and you have the beginning of a "Blurb" book for starters.
Thanks for all the encouragement and help, Tom. I've found that I do very well have an incredibly hard time editing my work. Its the most frustrating part of it all. Of course I can edit down to images that say something to me and that i am drawn to, but to find the images that outsiders get meaning out of, is entirely different. It's always reassuring to hear from people like yourself who has far more experience than a young kid like me does. Helps me put things into perspective and also understand some things that I've never really been taught as far as telling stories through images, etc.
Bob Michaels said:
I will say I had great fun. Especially the part about them letting me run the locomotive hauling freight. But in the end, I finally had to admit that I was unable to develop a real meaningful story. It has never happened before. And I hope it never happens again.
Solaris: I metered the image for an exposure somewhere between the outside (with the sign) and the inside of the office. From there I burned in both the foreground and background to get it where it needed to be.
I guess the thing that struck me about the shop when i first entered just how much 'safety' is hammered into the workers surroundings.
That shop in particular had been free from accident for over 500 days. Yet other shops in the area have accidents quite often, and for the union workers, its actually pays better to be off on medical leave.... so for some workers (not the shop i've visited though) it seems logical that if they can make double the overtime and get paid while being off for medical leave/injury its more worthwhile for their families.
Then again this is just from word of mouth stories or feelings about it all from the shop manager I know. He said the current shop (the one photographed) does exceptionally well.. but at the yard he was stationed at previously, accidents happened quite often.
So who knows... maybe that's something I see differently (and photograph differently) when I visit the yard back in my parents home.
That is what scares me the most I think about the project. Fear that it will not fruit into anything. But in any case its gotta go somewhere. I figure I stick with it, something will eventually happen.
