Hi ... We spent a somewhat similar weekend, Bill ...
I know this has been brought up before, but, for me, it's always been more of an academic issue than a real issue. This weekend it became real, but from another perspective. I'm now going through about 30 years worth of negatives, proof prints, and contact sheets with the idea of not only organizing the chaos but also to put together portfolios and to finally do something with my work. I've also shot more than 4000 digital images this past year. And, as a peripheral aside, I had a chance to view some contact sheets made by WES and some by Elliott Erwitt. Putting this all together here's what I found: While there was definitely a lot of crap and "test shots" that got erased from the digital library, I'm sure there were also some images that were disappeared because, at the time, I thought they sucked and that there'd be no reason to keep them. Looking back at my negatives and contact sheets, I saw quite a few photos that I disliked at one time or another, but when put in the context of a body of work, or in the context of a portfolio on a particular subject, these same "loser pics" had a new life. A new crop might have been found, another way of printing the photo may have made it better or different. And looking at the WES and EE contact sheets (as well as some of mine) it was easy to see what the photographer was thinking and trying to accomplish with a particular series of shots. And, by putting them into the context of the time, a better understanding of the work in general was arrived at. So, because of the huge number of files generated by our desire to shoot digital, save film cost, make our work flow easier or faster, something is lost ... the record of our work is gone or diminished. Maybe that's not important for some people ... maybe not now ... but perhaps some years down the line it may be. shel belinkoff William Robb wrote: > We had a dog show this weekend. > An obedience trial. > Rather than showing how wonderful my dogs are, I took pictures instead. > A lot of them, in fact. > Close to 300 on the istD. > Had I been shooting film, I would probably have shot perhaps 1/3 that > number, maybe less. > > So, what's the problem with this? > > I am quickly being inundated with images. > I deleted over 50 from this weekend as being absolute crap, probably, I > should delete another hundred and 50 for being lesser crap. > > Had I been shooting film, I would still have tossed half the pictures. > > So what's the problem? > Just delete the files and forget them, right? > After all, it didn't cost me anything to shoot them, no film was wasted, and > no prints were made, right? > > Well sure, but I just wasted an hour looking at what turned out to be 2/3s > crap, and plucked 34 images out of the mire that may be worth looking at. > > Had I been shooting film, I would have spent perhaps 30 dollars on film and > processing, probably would have still had a couple of dozen good images to > look at, and would have spent about 5 minutes culling the garbage. > > To my credit, I shot a lot of subjects that I wouldn't have shot otherwise, > which is good. > And I got, I am sure, a good picture that I wouldn't have gotten on film, > perhaps even more than one. > > However, there is still the time factor involved in looking at several > hundred pictures, and then culling out 90 percent right off the start. > > The law of diminishing returns is definitely at work here. > > On a more positive note, I did the award photos. One of the recipients was a > young lady with a GSD. I didn't get any good shots of both of them, but in > two pictures, I got a good shot of each. > I ended up doing a cut and paste, and got a good picture of both, which is > kind of cool. > > So that's how I spent my weekend.
