Interesting, theses days I increasingly leave my linhof and tripod in my trunk and walk around with an elmar mounted on a Nex-7. But I still go back to my linhof and deardorff when I find a good location.
Originally Posted by DrTang
Interesting, theses days I increasingly leave my linhof and tripod in my trunk and walk around with an elmar mounted on a Nex-7. But I still go back to my linhof and deardorff when I find a good location.
+1If we all burned our crappy negatives simultaneously, the Earth would be shrouded in smoke for decades, causing a new ice age.
- Leigh
Revisiting this thread, I am inclined to think that to burn or not to burn is not really the question. The main question is, how to improve one's photo editing skills? And I agree with those who have more or less expressed their suspicion that residing to any fireworks is merely a sigh the author has just come close to understanding his editing skills are not sufficient for his current needs....
Myself, I've found out editing my own stock of photos was often too tough a task. I came to conclusion a better way to learn was to practice in editing (i.e. choosing) images made by others - as those were just images for me, and no memories of the process of making those and no wishes about how they should (as opposed to how they actually did) come out interfered into the editing. After a fair amount of time and effort spent on editing other people's work (not committing any job as an editor, just doing that for my own pleasure), I noticed my skills refined, and I was really able to judge my own photos better, too.
Besides, that practice changed my style and subjects choice enormously. In the early days, my photography was all in the legacy of the tradition that dominated the local amateur photographers' clubs here.... No there weren't any written-down rules anywhere; but looking back, I'd say the common beliefs looked as iron-cast as a primitive tribe's taboos. "Don't ever let the subject look into your lens! For that's what only uneducated snapshooters and the despised low-grade studio artisans do." "Try to catch a moment as unusual and abnormal as you can. For that's what the real skill is." "Don't shoot things that are just beautiful, for that's what the commons like. To be a real artist, shoot something shocking instead, for a true artist is to be against the stupid crowd." Street photography was valued above all the rest. In landscapes, elaborate printing - to the level of making the print to look nowhere near reality - was valued perhaps more then the subject. Etc... Thinking of it now, I feel that kind of photography looked more like a special sort of sports rather then a fine art practice.
That sport was interesting enough while I was still a beginner but it got totally frustrating the day I understood I was no longer worse then the other club members. Then, I looked at the photos themselves. And I understood I didn't want to make them any more. They just were not interesting to me. (And I suspect they were of little interest to anybody outside the clubs community either.)
I started looking for any photos (by any authors) that I'd like to watch again and again, for hours year after year. Now, those are all in a single folder in my computer (as I can't find and/or can't afford real prints of the most of those). Last time I counted, there were 136 images there; 91 of those were definitely LF. 108 were of human beings. No more then 11 (and maybe less) of them could be considered candid; the rest 80 were surely posed. In 70, there were people looking straight into the lens. In the pictures of beasts (20 total, 14 of which being cats), the ratio was still higher, with 12 of the 20 subjects looking straight into the lens.
Oh, and on the personalia represented in that my own folder of choice... There is not a single photo by any of the Magnum people there. There are 2 pictures by C.Watkins and 2 by A.Adams. 2 are by J.Sturges and 4 by B.Rheims. But there are 31 by Matthew Brady and his team of pros that worked together... and 29 by Lewis Wickes Hine (who had no photo assistants at all...).
Could I ever guess what I was really interested in if I just continued shooting the way I was inspired by the community and analyzing just the pictures I made myself? You bet I'd never do, no matter how much of those I archived - or burnt.
Most writers have editors, it works for me.
Tin Can
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
what a bunch of maroons
It works for everybody. More so, I'm pretty sure the other way does not work for anyone. But by no means that implies a writer (or any other artist) should have no editing skills him/herself.
Yes it is. It's really funny when put as explicitly and as exaggerated as I've put it above. But believe me it's not funny at all when you are influenced by that (or any other) kind of nonsense right from your nursery school. Then, it's really tough a task to extract that out of the common beliefs and out of your own soul and rephrase it in as funny a way as above.
And I don't think any of us is totally free from this or that cliches. It's only other people's ones that are recognized as funny nonsense at once. And our owns are just universal truths, aren't they? ;)
If nothing else, keep your negatives as a benchmark for future growth. You'll see how much you have improved. Lock them away and don't think about them if you must, but I wouldn't destroy them.
-Chris
In Chicago we prize our unsung, unknown idiot savants, ala, Henry Darger and Vivian Maier.
I am doing my best to emulate them...
Perhaps I need to escape from here.
Tin Can
I suppose
And I don't think any of us is totally free from this or that cliches. It's only other people's ones that are recognized as funny nonsense at once. And our owns are just universal truths, aren't they?
I tend to gravitate towards doing things exactly opposite of cliches - so maybe that is my cliche
I think Daniel said it best, saving out the older family shots, even the boring wedding candids and such, makes sense because once those people are aged or gone it's important to remember them. In a fire I'd readily save the old family snapshots way before any "fine art".
And of course he is saving his best work and successful photos.
But why not burn all the mediocre, even if a few gems get lost in the process? They are only pictures and even if Daniel becomes a famous photographer someday, are the early photos that important? When I look at the early Avedon, Walker Evans, Irving Penn or Ansel Adams photos I think not - they made pedestrian student photos too. I saw a show of Diane Arbus's contact sheets once, it was horrid.
And if some missing link gets torched, so what? It will only add to the mystery of the late great 21-st Century artist and revolutionary war leader, Daniel Stone.
What will the world miss? Photos of old barns, train tracks, self-portraits in the mirror with a Leica, student still life photos of eggs and wine bottles. 4x5 shots of tall buildings to show perspective control. Wooden portraits. Polaroids of empty beer cans. Ugly nudes of flabby girlfriends. Stupid tearsheets for stupid clients. Haven't we all seen these before?
Really, I came up in the 80s doing thousands of archivally processed, Selenium toned fiber prints, carefully double matted. And most are so freaking boring I threw them out too. I went from about 200 cubic feet to 12 cubic feet. Nobody cares about how hard you worked or how many pictures you made in the past. Just go forward, make new work, keep that process going and screw the rest.
No client, gallery, or patron worries about your old work. You're competing against the Dash Snows and hipster posers who think because they used a roll of 35mm film that they're special. LOL.
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