pbromaghin
Subscriber
All keepers, no binners.
I do large format photography of mainly static subjects which affords the opportunity to identify the "binners" before exposure and just not take them. Everything else, the badly seen images, the blunders, and the triumphs, are finished as the best possible gelatin-silvers I can make. The work is the work is the work and that means the totality of all the photographs.
Remember, the great renaissance artists kept all their drawings, even the bad ones, as an affirmation of the highs and lows in the stream of creativity. They called their mistakes pentimenti and the study of pentimenti by subsequent scholars has enlarged the appreciation of their most successful works. I guess photographs, contact sheets, negative failures, can be pentimenti as well.
Interesting bit of art history. Now I feel a lot better about keeping and scanning all my negatives. You made me go back and give some old rolls a second look today. It was very instructive. So, is anybody else going to put up some pics? Or are you all just going to sit back and blab about it?