Weekend Exercise: The Power of Two

Time required: 1–5 weeks
Difficulty level, on a scale of 1–5: 5

...Forgive me for this one. In the early part of my life I wanted to be a teacher, and I'm still a frustrated one at heart. I know a lot of you are more experienced photographers than I am, and might not think you need workshop-type exercises to hone your chops. I'm certain I could learn a thing or two about shooting from large swaths of my readership, just as I learn from your comments every day.

Then again, it's a fact that teaching can still be effective even when the students are more talented than the teacher. It's still the student carrying out the exercise and bringing his or her own talent and intelligence to bear on the assignment.

I've been feeling an interest lately in coming up with some practice exercises to help people see more effectively and understand their own work better. Not necessarily technical exercises, not necessarily about camera handling or settings, not necessarily problem-solving (much of the intellectual interest of professional and commercial photography, I'm convinced, resides not in visual thinking but in problem-solving). Some of these might even be things you could do without a camera.

I'm going to give one a try, and then maybe a few more at some point. There are some didactic difficulties with some of the ones I have in mind—for instance, if I create a visual exercise and then give an example or two of it, then people might tend to think that performing the exercise is related to mimicking my examples, even though my examples might not be very good. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

The power of two project
So here's the first exercise. (It's pretty involved—some of the later exercises will be simpler.)

1. Find another photographer to work with.

2. Do this with a digital camera, even if you usually shoot film. Each of you shoot between 500 and 1,000 exposures on an identifiable theme of your choosing. Red, bushes, motion, lonliness, fire, skin, a certain place—doesn't matter what you choose, just something that provides a loose framework (but try not to be too rigid and limited—it needs to be something that can hold your interest over 500 to 1,000 shots) [UPDATE: See Ken's modification, below. —MJ]. It should all be new shooting, done over a shortish period of time, from a single day to perhaps no longer than a couple of weekends. This is an exercise, so don't sweat the shooting too much; just get the shots in the can.

Don't verbalize to your photo-friend what you had in mind. Don't review your own work yourself, past whatever occasional chimping you do as a part of your regular shooting habits.

3. Trade cards. You're each going to edit the other's work.

The first challenge will be for each of you to get a handle on what the other person is up to. What's the commonality in the shooting? Where's the consonance between the better pictures in the set? What the other person up to, or after?

Right there, you might find some surprises. Your shooting has to communicate what it is about, on its own, to the other person. It could well be interesting to see whether you manage to pull it off. And, if you don't, what the other person sees instead!

4. Each of you make a "first pass" edit on the other's work and come down to about 1/10th of the amount of the original shooting.

5. Share your first pass edit with the other photographer, and get the other person's opinion of his or her own work. Don't show the 90% you've rejected, just what you selected.

But when you take the other person's work back for your second pass edit, you're still in charge—you're the editor. You can be influenced by your friend's opinion of his or her own work, but the final decision is up to you, and you should still do with their work what you think is best.

6. Do a second-pass edit on the other person's work and cut the number in half. At this point, you have between 25 and 50 pictures in the selects, and you have, of course, two sets between you.

7. Duplicate the sets so that you each have both sets on your computers.

8. Each of you then edits from that second pass down to a final edit of between five and twenty pictures, in whichever way seems to make the strongest, most cohesive, and most coherent set. You each do this on both sets—both on your own work and on the other person's.

9. Hold two separate discussions in which you look at each pair of edits in turn. Talk about what each person came up with. Do this first with one person's work, then the other. Discuss it; argue it, if need be. Each of you can make your case as to why you made the final selections you did.

You can bring other people in at their stage to field their opinions as well.

10. Finally, the original photographer specifies his or her ideal final set, again working just from the chosen pictures, not going back to include previous rejects. You can pull from each person's final set. It might be the edit you already chose, or you might choose to go with your friend's edit, or you might combine the two in some way—use your edit but go with two or three pictures the other person liked, or use mostly the other person's edit but preserve a few of your own favorites.

The whole process could take 1–5 weeks to complete. Err on the short side.

•     •     •

I'm not going to try to tell you what you should get out of this exercise. The point is to learn about your own work from having someone else make the decisions about it, and to gain some experience editing work that you're not personally ego-involved in, at least not directly.

The first time through, though, I'd recommend not working too hard at it. Do this all reasonably quickly. Be careful and thoughtful, sure, but this is the sort of thing you'll get better at with repetition, not by being super-careful and overthinking when you do it the first time.

If you're lucky enough that you both get something out of the exercise, try it again. Or, if you enjoyed it but didn't think you worked particularly well with the friend you originally chose, try it with a different friend.

•     •     •

I have at least two more exercises in mind, but I have to shoot some examples for them. No promises, but I'll keep this line of inquiry in mind.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): "Good exercise in trying to communicate with a lens. May I suggest that participants select non-objective subjects? Selecting 'Red,' for example, will be pretty...well. Selecting 'Isolation' would be a much better challenge for an andragogical exercise."

Mike replies: Good modification. So adopted.

RobinP: "Between 500 and 1,000 exposures—what!? Some of us just don't work that way. I 've had my latest camera just over three months and in 'heavy use' it has less than 1,000 exposures. Must be the legacy of considering the cost of every exposure with film, but if I don't get the shot I want within three exposures then I move on. The excercise you describe would probably occupy me for maybe 50 exposures max.

"I'd rather do the 'editing' while out with the camera than be faced with too much choice when back home looking at the PC screen."

Mike replies: Of course I'm not really the teacher, so any two friends who actually did this could modify the rules to suit.

But if I were the teacher, I'd assign you to go out and shoot 500 exposures in a day at least a couple of times. It's not that hard, and you'd learn something from the experience—even if you go right back to your usual way of working. Which you probably will.

Nick Cutler: "I really like the sound of this, but have one rather terminal problem: I don't know any other people interested in photography! I think that's the main reason for being interested in this project: I don't have a clue if any of my pictures are any good, or what I'm supposed to be doing in Lightroom, or anything, really. So is there anyone else in t'same boat so to speak, who might like to collaborate? Ideally in the UK perhaps?"

Mike replies: So you, like RobinP, have actually already found an avenue to learn something important from this exercise—in your case, it's that you need to find a few photo-friends. I'd make it a high priority if I were you. It's a big part of the attraction of this hobby, and a big part of the fun of it, too. Go forth and seek! You'll be glad you did.

John Krumm (partial comment): "I take it by edit you mean selecting?"

Mike replies: Yes.

Comments

[Steve Barnett]

Starting with 500 to 1000 photo's, that's a lot of film!

But as the very numbers involved are symptomatic of assumptions about digital photography perhaps that alone should be the lesson?

[Steve Barnett]

Here is another way to do it. Each make ten photographs, and write down a secret list of twenty key words that explain or describe the set. Exchange images and ask the other party to write a list of their key words that describe your pictures, and visa versa. The revelation will be if when compared any of the keywords match. It also encourages self editing in getting down to ten images, or even as many as ten images if you are working in 8x10.

[Mani Sitaraman]

Can't I just go on Amazon and buy some new gear instead?

[Henry Rogers]

Mike, I think you are being unrealistic. The thought of being given a card by someone else with 1000 of their unsorted and unselected pictures makes the heart sink. Just 500 would be almost as bad. However conscientious both parties try to be, eyes will be glazing over long before anything useful is achieved.

I always used to fall asleep back in the days when people used to show their holiday slides in a darkened room. I think everyone did, so polite cover-ups and well mannered appreciative comments became the norm.

Let's not go back there!

[John Krumm]

Sounds like an interesting exercise. I need more friends. I take it by edit you mean selecting, and the exercise involves no cropping or other PP?

[Robert Roaldi]

I haven't done your previous exercise yet, i.e., walking around with just one prime lens (for a year, was it, can't remember).

[Richard]

500-1000 images in a single day or over two weekends? So no thinking, eh?

[Jim Bullard]

An interesting idea but as an old film photographer who has always had a limited budget I'd have to change the initial number of images downward substantially or extend the shooting time. Even though I have switched to digital the most photos I have ever shot in a day is a bit over 200. I simply don't work fast enough to shoot 500-1000/day. Trying to shoot that much that fast would represent a major shift in my way of working that would result in images that were not characteristic and thus defeat the purpose of the exercise. To be honest, I also don't know any photographers who shoot that profusely. Most of the photographers I know think I shoot a lot (relative to them) so I'd have trouble finding a partner in the process. I might give it a shot under modified parameters though, i.e. whatever we shoot in a day or two.

[Jim]

Even 500 sheets of 8x10 film would keep me in the darkroom for weeks. 5x7 wouldn't be any faster. I don't think I could shoot that many sheets of film in a month, much less a few days to a week.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Good exercise in trying to communicate with a lens. May I suggest that participants select non-objective subjects? Selecting "Red", for example, will be pretty...well. Selecting "Isolation" would be a much better challenge for an andragogical exercise.

Also, if participants are going to "trade cards" they should obviously shoot jpegs, eh?

[Alan]

I agree with the common sentiment that 500 is WAY to many.
I don't think I have EVER shot 500 images in a single day.
On a related note, one of my favourite stories from art school, a fellow student and I had borrowed a 4x5 and gone out to the woods. At one point we each stopped at one scene. We both saw the scene from the same point of view, but we found we only had one sheet of unexposed film left. We shot a wide shot and each cropped later in the darkroom. My shot was horizontal, his was vertical. Both were good shots, each was completely different.

[JG]

I wouldn't mind sifting through 500+ finished photos, but who wants to look at someone's raw and unprocessed photos ... or even worse, show theirs in that form? Not me, that's for sure!

[john Robison]

Re. 500 to 1000 exposures.

Can be done even with film, just now much more expensive. The most I ever shot in one day was 100 feet of Tri-X at Elkhart Lake racetrack. This was with two Pen F half frame cameras so about 1400 exposures. It took most of the next day to process the whole batch in a 4 reel Nikkor tank. But at that time 100 feet of TX was $8 and a box of 10 Kodak snap caps was $1, those were the days.

[Richard Newman]

I'm with those who think 500+ images are too many for any thought out project. Back in the film days, the commercial photographer's mantra was "film is the cheapest thing in your budget". Especially for non-repeatable events. But then we didn't have immediate digital feedback as we do now. And I don't know of anyone who routinely shot that many negatives. I feel that high minimum results in shoot-shoot-shoot-don't think-shoot. Instead I would suggest a maximum of 100 images and a stated goal for the project-e.g. "show effects of different weather on how people interact on the street"-or whatever turns you on. Either way, the exercise should be instructive.

[John Krumm]

Another comment... Quickly making selects from a huge pile is not so hard when you have to do it. When I would teach small groups of middle school students, usually seven, I would narrow down a class total of often well over 500 shots to just a few per student for discussion in under 30 minutes. Two edits per student. These we quickly reviewed before the next shoot.

Occasionally we would try group edits, with people arguing for keepers as I zipped through. Fun chaos.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I don't see how this could possibly work with the drastically smaller sets some people are proposing. In particular, I think that loses the opportunity to find much that the original photographer didn't put there in the set. (Maybe, possibly, that means the exercise can't work for people too tightly tied shooting really lightly; so be it.)

Those of us who never go out with a theme in mind may also have problems, though different ones. I'm willing to accept this as part of the terms of the exercise.

Having the experience of looking through large numbers of other people's photos is good for you (says the former highschool yearbook photo editor, etc.)! And making selections from photos you didn't shoot is a remarkably different thing from selecting your own. Give it a try; it's interesting. Understanding it better will be good for you.

[Lars Jansen]

I'll have to skip this exercise (neither friends nor time, and for me shooting that many relevant images would be very challenging as well), but I think it's a great idea to let your inner teacher out. It would be a great addition to the website, especially if you can make it more interactive, discussing results (from selected readers). The results and feedback would be very interesting.

[Dennis]

If you want to learn to see learn to draw. Put down the camera and pick up a pencil. Stop moaning. I can hear you. Guaranteed results.

[Jim Bullard]

Ooo! I hadn't thought that it would have to be JPGs. I never shoot JPGs, as in never ever since the Raw processing program that Adobe bought out to create Lightroom. To me shooting JPGs is equivalent to shooting film in a box camera. I suppose I could shoot RAW+JPG and transfer the JPGs to another card.

[Chris Kurmann]

Hi Nick,
I'm sure you will have already received contacts by now, but if not, I'd be happy to partner up for a few weeks. I'm located in Switzerland not UK but I can make up for that by taking care of the technical side of things (FTP file share etc.) as required.
If you're interested please send me a mail [email protected]

Regards Chris

[Giovanni Maggiora]

Very interesting team assignment. A big eye-opener on the editing process, I'm sure.
Just one question: at which point is each allowed to post-process his/her own work? The strength of an image can change dramatically after it's processed. Impossible to post-process in detail an entire shoot, but some basic processing becomes necessary after a first cut, IMHO, and a second round of processing vital after the second...
My own edit rates are typically 1/4 to 1/3 at each round, leaving 8-10% od material for in-depth work...

[A. Costa]

Nice exercise, but I'm one of the many people that with "heavy shooting" means 4000 photos in a YEAR - and that was the first time I discovered and experimented with mirrorless. Now I'm down to about a quarter of it.

[Ben Shugart]

Judging only by my own reaction to Nick Cutler's comment, I suspect you may be on to more here than you intended. Perhaps we could informally use the comments to arrange pairings between interested members of your community of "followers". We might not be able to meet in person, but there's no reason that some minimally sophisticated use of online file sharing and video conferencing couldn't enable some very productive and interesting editorial conversations...not to mention possibly cultivating some new friendships.

[Animesh Ray]

Suppose we do this with multiple people simultaneously, on the same theme, taking care that we don't see one another's 'raw' shoots before the shootings are complete, then this becomes an experiment in social media as well...with real statistical data! How groups as opposed to individuals view ideas...

[John gillooly]

Wow! Photographers are difficult people! Nothing is easy😜. Mike, I think this is a pitfall of not being the teacher and not having the authority to just tell the student to do it! sounds like a great lesson. Being the first pass editor of another's work certainly takes folks out of their comfort zone as does, apparently, letting someone else see your raw take. But that is where people learn!

[Kenneth Tanaka]

For those having difficulty even deciding on a "theme", here ya go: http://www.magatsu.net/art/index.php

[Patrick Dodds]

Well, I've approached someone but they are not up for it as they think the exercise too involved. I'd love to give it a go though so if anyone is lacking a partner, I'd be interested. I'd have a few suggestions as to rules though - for example, I'd shoot on a D700 rather than my D810 so as to ease the pain of using Dropbox for the swapping of what would otherwise by enormous files (unless any volunteers happen to be in mid-Wales or London, thereby allowing for physical card-swapping). Secondly, I'd prefer to use RAW files and incorporate post-processing at some point, probably from near the beginning - so much of one's vision comes via post and I'd both love to see what others made of my files as well as seeing what I could do with theirs).
I was going to suggest that I'd prefer to process Nikon NEFs but actually it would be good to try Canon or Sony or whatever other formats people use, and probably "good for me" too. Thanks for suggesting this Mike - it seems like a lot of work but I think that is part of the reason for undertaking it...