Stipulated!

Sent in by Roger Bradbury. Read more below.

Final 21: I'm down to 21 in the Baker's Dozen selection, and it wasn't easy. Should have it finished up today or tomorrow. For some reason I'm afflicted with heavy procrastination with these things. Maybe I just don't like being judgmental.

A pleasure: This has been the most fun for me of any of these so far. I like families, I like kids, I like pictures that show relationships, and I like pictures that show emotions. And I like pictures that respect photography's relationship with both time and the vagaries of access (more about that below). I feel privileged that people are willing to share some of their favorite family pictures with me. So as you might imagine, it's been a lot of fun to engage with these 112 submissions.

99 nos: I've been worried, however, about what I might inadvertently have done to my own poor blog! Only dedicated participants in the "life of this site," if you will, would submit their pictures for a Baker's Dozen—and what I've done is to ask them for deeply personal and meaningful pictures that involve some of the most precious people in their whole lives. And then I'm going to reject 99 out of the 112 submissions, and leave 99 readers smarting? Is that smart?

No losers: If the screenwriters whose TV shows and movies I've been watching all my life have it right, then "stipulated" is a legal term for something that's going to be accepted without argument—"an agreement that a certain fact is true or uncontested," according to upcounsel.com, a legal site. So let's just stipulate this: all of the pictures submitted are pretty darn wonderful, and, in almost every case, I can see why you treasure them. So, no losers. If yours isn't chosen, no hard feelings, please? It doesn't mean it's not wonderful. It's just that 112 doesn't fit into 13.

Subsets: I've been toying with another idea...that I might present first the Baker's Dozen, but then also a couple of other groupings. For instance, the black-and-white submissions could make a strong subgroup...I'd even be leaving good ones out of that. And individual portraits of kids could make another subset. One or two of those will make the top 13, but there are more good ones than that, for sure.

Discussion: I'm also going to do a few posts talking about a few of the pictures I'm choosing and why I think they succeed as photographs, technically and aesthetically. I'm finding I have a lot to say, which is ground zero for any writer.

About the illustration: See what I mean? Anyone but a sociopath can see why this family loves this lovely shot. Sent in by longtime reader Roger Bradbury of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England (I forgot to ask people to indicate whether it's their own picture or not. Some of them obviously aren't). "Brothers Conal and Edan with their Grannie Vera at a family gathering, twelve years ago," Roger writes. "The boys are my nephews, and Vera was my mum; she passed away three years ago."

...And Yr. Hmbl. Ed. sneaks another extra in (this Baker is being especially generous). And now I'll say what I meant by "the vagaries of access" and its relationship to time: no one on Earth can take that picture of Conal and Edan and Grannie Vera now; nor will they ever be able to again. That's part of what makes the 112 submissions I've been looking at so special.

Back to work on it, and more soon.

Mike

Roger Bradbury replies: "It was a nice surprise to see the photo of my mum and nephews when I came to TOP and yes, I did take this photo. When Mum passed away I became the keeper of the family photos. She had sorted the photos into albums and captioned them with names and dating information. The largest album is 'Photographs From 1959.' I was born early that year, and some of the pictures on the first page are 'Roger 10 weeks, me and Whisky' (our dog). That would be March '59. The last photo in the album is of my brother Alan (with a beard!) in October 1985. Without Mum's captions we would be guessing about dates and who some of the subjects were, and I think she was looking ahead; one day it would be too late to ask her. I now realise that I haven't shown the photo above to anybody else! There's a family gathering coming up so I'll make some copies and give them out. I'll make sure there's a caption to go with it."

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

Comments

[Speed]

Not every submission was a winner but they were all certainly above average.

[Jim Allen]

I pledge to take no offense if my submission isn't selected, showing someone a photo of my grandkids having a great day is just another way of sharing a small slice of happiness with others. So for me, I was just sharing that. If you share it with others, that's cool, if not, that's cool too. We're all grownups Mike, we can stand a little judgement from time to time. I'm glad you're enjoying the challenge picking out the ones you like the best.

[Ernest Zarate]

A suggestion (meaning feel free to ignore!), and with having no idea as to the practicality, wisdom, or effort involved in doing this… But what if you did your Baker’s Dozen per usual, and then created an attractive Gallery page or three where you could post, with bylines, the other entrants. You’ve probably already considered that, I’m sure.

But on the off chance you haven’t…

[Patrick Perez]

Invented a new word last week, and it refers back to what you wrote: "stipulated" is a legal term for something that's going to be accepted without argument—"an agreement that a certain fact is true or uncontested,""

My new word is for when that agreement on the basic facts can't be...uhh... agreed. Constipulated is my neologism. You may use it as needed.

Patrick

[Is that sort of like where you agree to disagree, or more like SNAFU? --Mike]

[Patrick Perez]

I invented a new word last week, and it refers back to what you wrote: "stipulated" is a legal term for something that's going to be accepted without argument—"an agreement that a certain fact is true or uncontested,""

My new word is for when that agreement on the basic facts can't be...uhh... agreed. Constipulated is my neologism. You may use it as needed.

Patrick

[Brian Stewart]

112 is a lot, but it's not an insanely large number. I'd look at them all if they were put up online somewhere where I could browse from one to the next fairly readily. Not in a blog post obviously. A TOP online submissions gallery?

[Sumanta]

I am enjoying this process of this BD through your posts which is talking about your thinking, situations you are growing through.

Yes, I would also like others, love to see all 112 someday.

[Farhiz]

Why does everything have to be a contest? What's wrong with showing all submissions?

[Well, then you have something different. This is like a juried show or an edited book, that's all. --Mike]

[Steve C]

Discussing is a fantastic idea. We all learn something (about each other, about what makes a good picture, about our own opinions) when that happens.

I love the idea of subsets ("alternative edits" perhaps — you can edit one set of material five different ways depending on the brief you're editing to) to look at the submissions from different angles. (It was really hard to avoid a photography pun there — I tried through a different lens, in a different light...).

Finally — and I'm sure I've said this before — there is no shame in selecting. Selection is a way of responding to the body of work, and it's therefore personal and subjective and related to some fixed criteria. It is not a judgement on the person who made the work in the first place, or on the value of their response to their own relationship to the subject or the creative act or whatever.

I think it's a great thing for artists and creative professionals of all types to understand that while the best work comes when you put yourself into it, you cannot grow by identifying with your work. You put yourself into the work, but you are not your work — and critique of the work is not a criticism of you.

Really internalising that is a way for creative people to find a sense of security that allows them to explore new perspectives and ways of working — or (!!!) to defy criticism and feedback without having to feel resentful or bitter about it.

It can be really clarifying and affirming to hear criticism of your work that you don't agree with! It can help you confirm that you're on the right track.

[Bear.]

Agree with Brian Stewart - I was about to suggest the same when I saw his post. Then you could have a readers' vote for (say) the top 3? It would open up a lot of interesting commentary, give an interesting comparison to your choices, and take you off the hook by not excluding contributors - participation awards all around.

[Thomas Mc Cann]

Much as the thought of a site with all the images occurred to me I also considered the amount of work it might place on your shoulders

[Plus, no one actually needs me for it. It could just be a Facebook group or a group at a sharing site. The game here is to create a small edited set, which is a different thing than a large unedited set. --Mike]

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I'll be surprised if my submission is accepted. Just on the numbers, and then it's a competitive bracket, as they say about sports tournaments!

It's valuable to me, of course, but I'm not all that confident it's an outstanding photo in any broader sense (I'm also probably too close to it to be able to evaluate it at all objectively).

The value to me in the whole project is that it's a set edited by somebody whose tastes aren't so far from mine as to be a clash, and who is good at this definition of "editing".

(It's weird but sort-of comprehensible when you look at publishing workflows that the word for "selecting" a work from a group of candidates, and the word for "revising" a work (sometimes but not always at the behest of the person making the selection, who is called the editor) are the same word. And then that the term for revising a literary work also became the term for altering a photographic image.)

[Richard Parkin]

I get what you are saying about a “small edited set” but wouldn’t it add value to result for the viewer to see what the set was edited from?

The other factor which I suspect you do not consider is what value it would add to the blog ;-).

Hope have been out of reach of the current flooding.