How photographers comb through own work

[Pieter12]

I have a pretty good and efficient filing system for both film and digital and I do keep EVERYTHING. That it is all either in my darkroom or on several hard rives backed up the in the cloud means it is not cumbersome in terms of the rest of my life.

Since I do have all those old images, thousands I have never printed, it has allowed me to stroll through them years later and extract all or portions of them to use in various ways such as abstract content for collages that I do in cyanotype.

When I shoot digital, I make an initial cull of selects and format the card right afterwards. Film gets filed in binders, I maybe make 2-3 work prints per roll, half of those might end up printed larger, scanned and sorted into projects filed in archival boxes, I try to keep the "keepers" to a minimum, truly what I deem good (I can be a harsh critic) and fits within a body of work. Every so often I will post projects to my website.

 

[NB23]

Well, I'm not going to glorify Ansel Adams or argue over quality of Leiter's and similar others work. One needs to see through it to understand their genius.

Where did you get "idealistic" art market from my posts I'll never know. There are sets of works by individuals that all look enticing to engage with, and there are others that come though as rather chaotic, uneven, more like got lucky here, not so much over there. What leads to that end result has to do with how they get put together.

But it is about perception with all the subjectiveness it comes with.

For you AA may have been a genius, but if you honestly go through the mentioned 400 Photographs I seriously doubt you will stay that course (and that if you can get past inept quality of print), his genius diminishes with every 50 photographs. Of course that is how I see it, but as I always appreciated his work, without placing him with all the other saints, I feel very strongly about how his legacy has been, perhaps unjustly, badly hit by that one publication.

And of course I could not disagree more with: if one likes Adams, there is no way he can also like Leiter.

First, I feel you definitely need to go beyond the usual mainstream dozen names that are nothing more than cash cows thanks to sponsorship and wedged into our throats. There is a whole galaxy of great photographers on the indy scene that will never get picked up by phaidon. Unless they pay, of course. Of course!

Besides, I am not a fan of Adams and there you are thinking so, just because I was objective in my propos.

Leiter? It took a shoveling down our throats by deep pocketed folks in order to make his work accepted. Before that, nothing.
The good old marketing principle of “after 50 exposures to the public, any work of art will become succesful” is a classic.

Oh, and before you go thinking I
dislike Leiter, it is quite the contrary. But, again, I have to be objective here too. His genius has not suddenly waken up in our collective Conscience. No.
It’s just that a few folks decided to push his work, make it make money. That’s it.

 

[Pieter12]

None of the photographers mentioned made much money during their lives, maybe near the end of their careers. The ones making the big bucks (like Annie Liebovitz) do so because they shoot celebrities and ads and have become celebrities themselves. Believe me, no one (except maybe the publishers) is getting rich from selling photobooks. Of course, there are many who make a decent living, as well as hucksters like Peter Lik or even Richard Prince.

 

[Hassasin]

First, I feel you definitely need to go beyond the usual mainstream dozen names that are nothing more than cash cows thanks to sponsorship and wedged into our throats. There is a whole galaxy of great photographers on the indy scene that will never get picked up by phaidon. Unless they pay, of course. Of course!

Besides, I am not a fan of Adams and there you are thinking so, just because I was objective in my propos.

Leiter? It took a shoveling down our throats by deep pocketed folks in order to make his work accepted. Before that, nothing.
The good old marketing principle of “after 50 exposures to the public, any work of art will become succesful” is a classic.

Oh, and before you go thinking I
dislike Leiter, it is quite the contrary. But, again, I have to be objective here too. His genius has not suddenly waken up in our collective Conscience. No.
It’s just that a few folks decided to push his work, make it make money. That’s it.

I'm not going to make this personal, even if I don't know how anyone can make subjective comments and call them ... objective.

But now at least I know the reverse is true, you do not think Ansel was a genius and you do like Leiter. Looks like we are pretty close.

This is topic is not about empirical fix for how to pick or evaluate anyones work. There will never be anything objective about it. It brings to mind a discussion Bill Jay had over a rather average photo with a net on a beach. It was a very long exchange. Anything can be discussed at length, usually with no conclusion, even one stating that the whole discussion was a waste of time. BTW, I really like Bill Jay.

 

[Hassasin]

None of the photographers mentioned made much money during their lives, maybe near the end of their careers. The ones making the big bucks (like Annie Liebovitz) do so because they shoot celebrities and ads and have become celebrities themselves. Believe me, no one (except maybe the publishers) is getting rich from selling photobooks. Of course, there are many who make a decent living, as well as hucksters like Peter Lik or even Richard Prince.

I can surely appreciate that insight. I was only after visual aspect, aesthetics of what is being shown and how it affects "artistic" reputation of a photographer or our own. The ability to being own best critic is surely a hard skill to learn, maybe even harder to appreciate.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

It’s a mad world. Look at all the reels out there. Instagram, youtube. It created a whole new ADHD society.

Your slideshow needs to be 1 minute, and each slide needs to last 0.2 seconds.

Trust me on that.

You're right. By their standard, I could show my entire two-week 300 slide vacation production in 60 seconds. But for what I paid for the vacation, I want to slow it down. My guests will just have to sit through it and suffer.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

"Dog's poop shot by Andy Warhol is indeed going to make it to an exhibit, Joe Doe does same thing and he may end up being arrested for a public offence."

You could be very correct about that!

I'm reminded of a professional society meeting I attended many years ago where the guest speaker was a special effect producer for Star Trek. He talked about all sorts of technical stuff like why the Starship Enterprise banked when it turned and why it flew in a nose-forward direction yet still had artificial gravity. He even talked about funny personality and distinctive behavioral patterns of Captains Kirk and Picard, and why they were significant to the story line (that I had a hard time believing, though). Then he recalled how he created the effect fo some planet or another. He told us that he stepped into dog poop as he walkled to his car, stopped to think about the situation, photographed it, and used that as the basis for the planet. Some people can be successful photographing poop and most of us probably not so much.

Why did it bank in zero-gravity space? That always seemed weird to me.

 

[Pieter12]

You're right. By their standard, I could show my entire two-week 300 slide vacation production in 60 seconds. But for what I paid for the vacation, I want to slow it down. My guests will just have to sit through it and suffer.

A bit off-topic, I rarely take vacation or family photos anymore. I leave that to the smartphone wielders. But it does give me a lot fewer photos to sort through.

And I rarely show my work to anyone who hasn't asked to see it. Except to illustrate a point on a forum, maybe.

 

[BrianShaw]

Why did it bank in zero-gravity space? That always seemed weird to me.

Because of the common viewer expectation that it flies like an airplane rather than a spacecraft.

 

[chuckroast]

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.

Large format photography, especially, makes me really careful about what I will even try to capture in the first place. The process itself is arduous enough that I have to really want the image to bother.

The other bookend to this is silver printing. The process of silver printing is sufficiently time intensive that I do a lot of weeding before a print is even contemplated. I have to "care about" the image enough to invest the hours to make even a workbook print.

For some years now, everything that makes it over those two barriers gets printed as 8x10 silver workbook prints - not quite exhibition quality, but close to a final interpretation. About 5% of those end up in the reject box. Of the remainder, a very view get scanned (the print, not the negative) to share with others electronically.

I am working my way forward with new work like this, and going back to all my pre-workbook stuff and revisiting it for the same treatment. When I have a full body of workbooks done, I will select a best of and make wall hangings of them. This will then be followed by a rinse-repeat cycle until such time as I am too infirm or dead to do more work. I do hope the God in whom I believe has a great darkroom and film/paper stash waiting for me...

P.S. The malleability of digital removes both of those barriers or at least lowers them considerably. I metaphorically consider this distinction the same as the difference between what it takes to appreciate J.S. Bach and pop music respectively.

P.P.S. I am utterly indifferent to whether or not other think my work is good. I don't do this for the approval of others. I do this because I have to. If someone happens to like what they see, this does make me happy, but it's not what motivates me. In this regard, I am certainly a harsher critic of my own work than anyone else would be. This also means I am never entirely satisfied with my current work.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Because of the common viewer expectation that it flies like an airplane rather than a spacecraft.

Why did it bank in zero-gravity space? That always seemed weird to me.

Actually, it was the fact there are no (air) molecules causing negative air flow on one side rather than zero gravity.

 

[BrianShaw]

Actually, it was the fact there are no (air) molecules causing negative air flow on one side rather than zero gravity.

I knew what you meant… vacuum. Same answer.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Large format photography, especially, makes me really careful about what I will even try to capture in the first place. The process itself is arduous enough that I have to really want the image to bother.

The other bookend to this is silver printing. The process of silver printing is sufficiently time intensive that I do a lot of weeding before a print is even contemplated. I have to "care about" the image enough to invest the hours to make even a workbook print.

For some years now, everything that makes it over those two barriers gets printed as 8x10 silver workbook prints - not quite exhibition quality, but close to a final interpretation. About 5% of those end up in the reject box. Of the remainder, a very view get scanned (the print, not the negative) to share with others electronically.

I am working my way forward with new work like this, and going back to all my pre-workbook stuff and revisiting it for the same treatment. When I have a full body of workbooks done, I will select a best of and make wall hangings of them. This will then be followed by a rinse-repeat cycle until such time as I am too infirm or dead to do more work. I do hope the God in whom I believe has a great darkroom and film/paper stash waiting for me...

P.S. The malleability of digital removes both of those barriers or at least lowers them considerably. I metaphorically consider this distinction the same as the difference between what it takes to appreciate J.S. Bach and pop music respectively.

P.P.S. I am utterly indifferent to whether or not other think my work is good. I don't do this for the approval of others. I do this because I have to. If someone happens to like what they see, this does make me happy, but it's not what motivates me. In this regard, I am certainly a harsher critic of my own work than anyone else would be. This also means I am never entirely satisfied with my current work.

But sharing your work with others makes them happy. Have you considered making prints of your best work, framing them, and gifting them to family and friends? Then if they hung them on their walls, it would make them happy and you even happier when you visited them seeing them up there. I'm just as guilty of leaving my stuff up in the dark closet in a box on a shelf. What's the point?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I knew what you meant… vacuum. Same answer.

Vacuum. Better answer, simpler.

 

[chuckroast]

But sharing your work with others makes them happy. Have you considered making prints of your best work, framing them, and gifting them to family and friends? Then if they hung them on their walls, it would make them happy and you even happier when you visited them seeing them up there. I'm just as guilty of leaving my stuff up in the dark closet in a box on a shelf. What's the point?

Actually, I do that periodically and the prints are well received. It's just that I barely have enough time for my own work, let alone print for others. But on special occasions ...


I would note that, sometimes when I see one of my older prints hanging on someone else' wall, I wince a little bit

 

[chuckroast]

Because of the common viewer expectation that it flies like an airplane rather than a spacecraft.

There is a two movie sequence called "Iron Sky" that is a hilarious send up of space movies and war in space. In the second one, as the spaceship takes off, the sound is of a big block V8 engine being revved. It's wrong and hilarious on many levels.

Honourable Mention: "Space Janitors" - a series from a comedy troupe in Toronto that is a wonderful parody of the whole Star Wars universe.

 

[VinceInMT]

But sharing your work with others makes them happy.…

Uhm, well, not always. A recent art project I did yielded negative feedback, notably form older women who objected to my choice of patterns, color, and on my choice of medium. I have another few pieces that people have found disturbing and wondered if something was wrong with me, particularly work based on the philosophy of Julia Kristeva.

Then there are those who, when viewing what I have considered a quite nicely done black and white print, ask “Why didn’t you do it in color?”

I suppose I could take the viewer into consideration when making work but I’m just not going to do that And why should I?

 

[Pieter12]

But sharing your work with others makes them happy. Have you considered making prints of your best work, framing them, and gifting them to family and friends? Then if they hung them on their walls, it would make them happy and you even happier when you visited them seeing them up there. I'm just as guilty of leaving my stuff up in the dark closet in a box on a shelf. What's the point?

A bit presumptuous. Have you considered how many of those framed prints might end up in the attic, facing the wall?

 

[chuckroast]

A bit presumptuous. Have you considered how many of those framed prints might end up in the attic, facing the wall?

Usually, a friend or family member will comment positively about a print they see, and that's when I make them one. I never pay for framing and matting, though.

 

[Pieter12]

Usually, a friend or family member will comment positively about a print they see, and that's when I make them one. I never pay for framing and matting, though.

Some people feel obligated to say something polite. But it is nice when they seem to appreciate the work and nicer of you to make a gift of it to them.

I am a bit more cynical: do you like it enough to buy it? That's the proof of the pudding.

 

[chuckroast]

Some people feel obligated to say something polite. But it is nice when they seem to appreciate the work and nicer of you to make a gift of it to them.

I am a bit more cynical: do you like it enough to buy it? That's the proof of the pudding.

I very rarely sell my work. I've made a few exceptions over the years, but mostly, I don't. Why? Because when I was young, I thought I wanted to be a photographer. I quickly discovered that I loved photography but just hated the business of photography. I found other business ventures to which I was better suited (and which also ended up flying me around Europe and parts of Asia at my employer's expense, where I promptly took pictures). I saved photography for the joy of doing it.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Some people feel obligated to say something polite. But it is nice when they seem to appreciate the work and nicer of you to make a gift of it to them.

I am a bit more cynical: do you like it enough to buy it? That's the proof of the pudding.

The people that I will offer a print to are honest enough tell me whether or not they want it. Generally though they will ask me for a copy first.

 

[Pieter12]

I very rarely sell my work. I've made a few exceptions over the years, but mostly, I don't. Why? Because when I was young, I thought I wanted to be a photographer. I quickly discovered that I loved photography but just hated the business of photography. I found other business ventures to which I was better suited (and which also ended up flying me around Europe and parts of Asia at my employer's expense, where I promptly took pictures). I saved photography for the joy of doing it.

I don't sell my work commercially, but I feel if someone likes it enough to add it to their collection, all the better. At the outset of my working life, I wanted to be a photographer--photojournalist, commercial, what have you (except weddings!). I could not afford the education nor the equipment and did not know how to became an assistant and work my way up. Instead, I studied art and advertising design, and ended up first as a graphic designer and later as an advertising art director. I am glad I did not become a commercial photographer. I have a lot of respect for the good ones, but I do not have the personality to do what they do well. I would not want to work for me--not that I was ever a bad client, I was considered well-prepared and understanding of the task at hand. I enjoy photography much more now that I have retired, doing work to please only myself and not depending on it for income. Plus, I learned quite a lot witnessing how top-tier pros work.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Actually, I do that periodically and the prints are well received. It's just that I barely have enough time for my own work, let alone print for others. But on special occasions ...


I would note that, sometimes when I see one of my older prints hanging on someone else' wall, I wince a little bit

You should be proud. They like it or it wouldn't be up there.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

There is a two movie sequence called "Iron Sky" that is a hilarious send up of space movies and war in space. In the second one, as the spaceship takes off, the sound is of a big block V8 engine being revved. It's wrong and hilarious on many levels.

Honourable Mention: "Space Janitors" - a series from a comedy troupe in Toronto that is a wonderful parody of the whole Star Wars universe.

Spaceballs?