As I continue to explore Olaf Sztaba's Blog, I keep finding engaging topics. One of them is how photographers judge their own work and select them for public to see. Note this is the man behind the two digitally published magazines I posted on the other day, the Medium Format Magazine and Elements Photography Magazine. I also find Olaf's photography refreshing that got my attention at an instant.
Olaf in Photography is curation (Part 1) states:
In the world of digital shooting, which brings in a lot of recorded images, it is becoming increasingly difficult to pick through and be own toughest critic.
With film there is usually that before-exposure thought, if it is worth doing, sort of a pre-selection.
With digital this is all but gone, as the only measure which may be holding us back is the memory card capacity. I don't mean to suggest everybody shoots digital with the gun out of the holster at all times, whatever shows up in front, then see through it later. At the same time we do continue at an immense, by comparison to film, pace, accumulating large amounts of files, creating the back log of images to examine, often adding time we could spend creating rather then evaluating.
In all this, we now have extremely capable phone cameras that is usually with us, and take a shot of things we would never bother bringing a camera to., further adding to what we need to process later.
Of course this topic applies to any photographs we make, irrespective of how they were taken, with sole difference being shear number of images to ... discard. Or do we?
To me this is about "keepers" and not necessarily all else is being thrown out. I don't really delete files as I continue to find some treasures of old I never knew I had, and certainly don't trash my film, ever. Often enough some not so good takes can be re-interpreted, edited in another way, and suddenly they meet the aesthetician in us.
This also goes into what Olaf is referring to directly: how, who we consider great photographers, select own work for display.
HCB had a history of taking thousands upon thousands of images, and selecting relatively few to show for it. It's how the "decisive moment" myth came to be. Clever way of creating an aura of perfection to the unsuspecting, with all the underwhelming evidence being withheld. Same can be said about just about every well known photographer. Few have actually published contact sheets, with final selection marked (and not necessarily one we would agree on), i.e. Jeanloupe Sieff, or Magnum in the revealing Magnum Contact Sheets.
Does everybody care what meets public eye, are we all capable of being fair and honest with own photographic failures? Do we select exclusively to personal standards, or do we consider who is to see it ?
This topic is NOT about thought process before we trip the shutter, this is all about how we look at and approve what we have already taken.
Olaf in Photography is curation (Part 1) states:
In the world of digital shooting, which brings in a lot of recorded images, it is becoming increasingly difficult to pick through and be own toughest critic.
With film there is usually that before-exposure thought, if it is worth doing, sort of a pre-selection.
With digital this is all but gone, as the only measure which may be holding us back is the memory card capacity. I don't mean to suggest everybody shoots digital with the gun out of the holster at all times, whatever shows up in front, then see through it later. At the same time we do continue at an immense, by comparison to film, pace, accumulating large amounts of files, creating the back log of images to examine, often adding time we could spend creating rather then evaluating.
In all this, we now have extremely capable phone cameras that is usually with us, and take a shot of things we would never bother bringing a camera to., further adding to what we need to process later.
Of course this topic applies to any photographs we make, irrespective of how they were taken, with sole difference being shear number of images to ... discard. Or do we?
To me this is about "keepers" and not necessarily all else is being thrown out. I don't really delete files as I continue to find some treasures of old I never knew I had, and certainly don't trash my film, ever. Often enough some not so good takes can be re-interpreted, edited in another way, and suddenly they meet the aesthetician in us.
This also goes into what Olaf is referring to directly: how, who we consider great photographers, select own work for display.
HCB had a history of taking thousands upon thousands of images, and selecting relatively few to show for it. It's how the "decisive moment" myth came to be. Clever way of creating an aura of perfection to the unsuspecting, with all the underwhelming evidence being withheld. Same can be said about just about every well known photographer. Few have actually published contact sheets, with final selection marked (and not necessarily one we would agree on), i.e. Jeanloupe Sieff, or Magnum in the revealing Magnum Contact Sheets.
Does everybody care what meets public eye, are we all capable of being fair and honest with own photographic failures? Do we select exclusively to personal standards, or do we consider who is to see it ?
This topic is NOT about thought process before we trip the shutter, this is all about how we look at and approve what we have already taken.