I have houseguests today, my second cousin Elizabeth Rose and her husband Eric Devine. Elizabeth Rose was also the name of the previous head of Clan Rose in the Scottish Highlands; my cousin also has a lot of Slavic heritage from her mother's side. She's an accomplished artist, a printmaker, who was recently away for a year in Poland on a Fulbright Fellowship. Eric used to be a wildlands firefighter, the guys who battle the huge forest fires in the American West. Now, after a sojourn in nursing school, he is a traveling R.N. who works in neurology. He's under contract in St. Louis, where they have to live in temporary arrangements. They sometimes stop and see me on their trips between St. L. and the huge wilderness areas of New York State where they like to hike and camp. This trip it was the Catskills. (Here's a map showing the Adirondacks [upper] and Catskills Parks in green.)
So I will make today's post short. -Ish.
Andreas wrote, yesterday: "Maybe, if you could tell us about things right out of your head it would be easier. :-) E.g., tell me how to sort through say 500–1,000 shots from a holiday and find the very few to keep."
Mike replies: Okay, that's pretty straightforward.
Start by defining a preliminary number goal. 1–6 for a memento, 15–20 for a set, 20–30 for a show, 60–80 for a book—but remain flexible, because the work itself will help set the number the edited set "wants" to be.
From there, here are two ways to go:
The Culling Method
Start with a rough edit meant to get rid of the chaff and filler. Obvious mistakes; anonymous postcard attempts; the useless detail shots that everybody thinks are artistic but that say absolutely nothing; near misses for which you had hopes when you were behind the camera but that really didn't quite work. Don't bother being heartless at first—anything that pulls on your affections, it's okay to keep for now. Get rid of what you can.
Wait a few days. Physically separate the pictures, or separate them virtually into different folders or whatever.
Take a second pass. First, look through the rejects and see if anything precious needs "saving." Then discard or set aside the rejects and don't look at them again. Then return to the remaining pictures and make another culling pass, getting rid of what you can.
Once you're down to 50–150, depending on your final goal, sequence them. This can be imperfect, but think of the flow, of variety from one to the next, of peaks and valleys—a simple sequencing strategy is to open with several strong pictures, end with several strong pictures, and have a strong handful in the middle, then build the connections of quieter or weaker shots in between. If the shooting is from a trip, then chronological sequencing might make sense, but don't be rigid—clusters of pictures from the same location but out of order, or something else, might work better. Remember that in sequencing, visual flow is just as good a principle as intellectual flow. Make sure the pictures look good next to their neighbors.
Then look at the story you're telling. Are there repetitions? Maybe you got six nice shots of a group of local kids, but you only need one. Make choices there; keep one but get rid of redundant shots. Are there imbalances? Too many shots of the beach you liked but not enough of the mountain hike? Or whatever? Get the different motifs into balance a bit. Experiment with taking certain shots out—is there loss, or does the omission not matter? Eliminate distractions from the overall theme. Does a picture that you like for an unrelated reason really contribute to the overall presentation? Get rid of what you can. Don't forget that there will be a lot of good (i.e., sharp, well-exposed, well-composed) shots that you just don't need.
Gradually, working in stages, allowing pauses for contemplation and for your choices to "soak in," successive rounds of culling will get you down to your number.
The Big Hits Method
This basically comes from the other direction. Look through all your pictures and note the few that you think are the very absolute best—the ones that hit on all cylinders for you, the ones you're completely proud of, the ones that are unambiguous "yesses" with no reservations. Make a couple of passes through the work noting those pictures in your mind. After doing this two or three times over at least a couple of hours and maybe a day or two, set those pictures apart. Don't worry about how many there are.
Then the trick is to just keep adding more pictures that you think support your hits as best as possible. Again, sequencing helps. Which of the hits need to be near each other and which further apart? Which need some quieter, more ordinary shots surrounding them to highlight their qualities? Experiment with finding other pictures that improve the flow from one of you hits to another.
Bonus
Obviously there are a lot of variations in these strategies, based on your goals, the nature of the project, the end use and the audience you envision, and how strict you feel like being with yourself. But a big bonus of doing this, one that is not to be undervalued, is that the process you go through in editing will start to help you when you shoot. You'll become more conscious of the kinds of shots you're going to need when you get to the editing stage. You'll find yourself looking at a detail shot and what will come to mind is the fact that you never need shots like that when you edit; so you just won't take that shot. The feedback loop continually improves your understanding of your shooting.
It's better to demonstrate this than just to talk about it, and there are a great many ways to edit, but this gives you a couple of basic tried-and-true strategies.
Mike
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Anything over a couple hundred shots is veering into OCD territory. Think more, look harder, shoot less.
Posted by: David Smith | Tuesday, 11 April 2023 at 06:05 AM